


Monsters

by CaptainAmelia22



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Flashbacks, Jaeger Pilots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 19,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainAmelia22/pseuds/CaptainAmelia22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Knifehead took out Gipsy Danger on Anchorage's Miracle Mile there were two pilots in her Conn-Pod. But it was Jazmine Becket who spilled from her Jaeger's burning body, more than a little broken herself, not her brother Raleigh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. oblivion

**Author's Note:**

> This story started out as a basic alternate universe one-shot-ten pages at the most, maybe 5k words. But then the idea took me by the lady-balls and I couldn't stop exploring, couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like if Raleigh hadn't been Gipsy's pilot, if it had been the other Becket siblings dying in her Conn-Pod out there with Knifehead. So I ran with it and let myself play around with characters and with ships that don't even exist in canon.
> 
> It's currently at 10k words and still going, although getting close to the end, praise Odin, but there's no way I can publish that in one go. So I'm going to section it off and publish it in pieces.
> 
> Hopefully it isn't dreadful.
> 
> -M

There’s a picture of the Becket siblings taped to a strut in Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod.

It’s the only thing of them that remains in the robot, a last will and testament to the powerful Rangers who once moved her giant limbs with just a few syncopated thoughts.  It flaps in the cold Alaskan air forlornly, waiting to be rescued and returned to the last child smiling on its surface.  

Tendo Choi is the one who rescues it in the end-he’s the only one left who knows of its existence, really- and he has to balance on the crumpled drift harness Yancy used to wear to reach the picture; as he tugs it free of the fraying tape, he tries to ignore the crust of blood marring the corner of the photo, tries to keep from wondering who it belonged too.

Which of his fierce Rangers reached for the photo before the end came for them and their Jaeger.  

He cradles it in the palm of his gloved hand and ignores the thousand questions shot his way by the scrambling Anchorage techs; he cannot look away from the three children smiling up at him, cannot stop hearing their voices screaming through the comms as Knifehead came in for a final killing blow.

Jazmine Becket smiles through the stain, a cheerful little girl in pigtails and her oldest brother’s favorite baseball cap and Tendo’s fingers shake as he thinks of that little girl, all grown up, lying in a PPDC hospital bed half-dead.  

Tears begin to prick his eyes at the sight of Yancy’s arms wrapping around both of his younger siblings and a part of him wishes the eldest Becket could have done that one last time.  

He wonders if the Beckets have spoken to each other, since Jazmine and Yancy were chosen for the program.  

He wonders if the other brother, the middle son, forgave his siblings for their choices.  

He hopes so.

The Sikorsky bearing the Marshal is enroute, Mr. Choi, the recon sergeant says through Gipsy’s still functioning comms.  Please return to Anchorage LOCCENT to greet the Marshal and his companion.

Tendo Choi sighs and grips the picture tight before jumping free of Gipsy’s broken skull.  Absently he pats her brow and whispers good-bye; she’ll be dropped in Oblivion Bay by curfew and he knows this is the only chance he’ll get to farewell his favorite Mark III Jaeger.

He’s still holding the picture when Marshal Pentecost steps onto the tarmac of the Anchorage outpost, the second Becket brother at his back, and Tendo Choi realizes it’s been fourteen hours after Gipsy Danger fell, with Jazmine Becket still breathing in the Conn-Pod.  

Fourteen long, painful hours.

Another perfect team, gone.

Another Jaeger broken and ready to sleep for good in the Bay.

“Hello Mr. Becket,” Tendo says as the sandy haired middle Becket kid comes to a halt before him.  He’s haggard, as haggard as the rest of them and Tendo pities him.  He knows the Beckets’ history, knows how hard this kid took to being passed over for the Jaeger program.

He knows how close the three siblings were, once upon a time, before their parents died and the PPDC took two out of three under its far-reaching wings.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Becket,” Tendo says quietly as the stone-faced Marshal looks on and Gipsy is slowly dismantled onto the flatbed of a massive ferry destined for California behind them.  He holds the picture out, his fingers tight over Yancy’s smiling face and the middle Becket kid’s blue eyes flash from his to the picture and finally to the hulking mass of the robot that destroyed his remaining family’s lives.

He doesn’t smile and he doesn’t take the picture but he does look away from the robot.  

After a tense, silent moment that all witness and wish they hadn’t, he simply shoves past Tendo and heads for the Infirmary, Pentecost at his back.

“My name is Raleigh,” he tosses over his shoulder towards Tendo, still standing with his arm suspended and his Rosary swinging in the frigid Alaskan air.  “Don’t call me mister, ever.”

Tendo Choi’s arm falls to his side and he glances once more at the picture before shoving it in the back pocket of his corduroy slacks.  

One day he’ll get it back to its rightful owner.  

One day, he’ll forgive himself for failing the last Becket kid.

In the picture that kid is laughing, his head tossed back onto his shoulders and Tendo can’t help wondering, as he turns back to the Anchorage Shatterdome and the hours of paperwork still waiting for him to finish, if Raleigh Becket will ever laugh so freely again.  

He hopes so.

He hopes they all will, one day, when this nightmare is over.  


	2. dim as a memory

_“He didn’t choose me because I’m his favorite, Raleigh!”_

Jaz’s voice echoes through their apartment just a few miles from the San Francisco Shatterdome and the two kids know everyone in the complex can hear this latest installment of the Becket family meltdown.

They’re too far past caring though.  

Which of course means somebody is going to say something really awful before the night is through.  

Raleigh, bent over the tiny fridge in their PPDC issue apartment, snorts before grabbing a cherished beer and popping the tab.

“Bullshit Jaz,” he mutters between gulps.  His throat works as he tries to contain his fury but it’s close. All he wants to do is punch Yancy.  

Or Pentecost.

Somebody, anybody.

Not Jaz.  

She’s furious of course, because he’s furious; now her jaw is clenched tight and her shortish blonde hair bristles in damp spikes around her head.  She’s in nothing but a PPDC issued training shirt and running shorts but he knows if she wanted to she could still kick his ass.

He’d let her too.  

He deserves it, for what he’s about to say.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Raleigh,” she says softly, her hands rising to run through her hair.  “Please, don’t be a moron.”  

She knows him better than anyone, better than Yancy even.  She knows he’s going to regret this tonight when he goes to bed, when the apartment goes dark and the bells for curfew are rung.

But he’s not in bed and it’s a good five hours before curfew.

He’s just getting started.

“Yancy chose you as a partner because you’re the baby, Jaz,” he snaps as he shoves past her and makes his way to the living room.  She flinches behind his back and her hands fist as she tries to keep calm.

But she’s just toeing the edge of true fury too.

And she’s not afraid to hit her brothers.  

“You’re the baby and no one, no one has ever been able to say no to you Jaz!  Ever.  Not Mom, not Dad, not even the goddamn scientists in the PPDC!”  Raleigh continues, his voice a bitter snarl in the still silence of their apartment.  The beer can is nothing but a twisted shell in his fist and its contents are burning through his veins, lending him a certain strength for the words he’s saying.   

For the treason he is committing.  

Jaz’s head is bowed, her hands flexing at her sides as Raleigh growls in her direction but she doesn’t say anything right off.

She’s going to let him have his say.  

For now.  

“Jaz, I swear to God, you cannot drive a Jaeger.  You’re too young, and you know it would kill our Mom if she knew what the fuck was going on.  If she was still around.  Jaz, you’re being an idiot,” Raleigh growls as he paces like a caged cat in their tiny living room.  Night is starting to fall but the reserve lighting hasn’t come on quite yet.  Both Beckets’ are in shadow.  

She wonders briefly where Yancy is, hopes that he’s not trying to back out of the Jaeger training, hopes that this won’t destroy their family and then Raleigh is turning to her and she can see just what it is that has his hackles up.

Her brother, the boy who’s only a couple years older than she is, the boy who’s protected her since they were in diapers, is scared.

Shitless, even.  

Some of her fury fades and she takes a step towards him, intent on backing out, on telling him everything will be fine.  That the Mark III Jaeger waiting for two of the Beckets won’t be waiting for her.  She’s ready to forgive him.

And then he opens his mouth like the jumped-up idiot he is and Jazmine snarls in his face, her fury once more fueling her long limbs into action. “You’re the baby, Jaz,” he says as she curses him out but he doesn’t blink.  Just keeps shooting her down.  “You were always supposed to go to college, Jazmine, to continue painting, to settle down inland, as far from the coasts and the fucking Kaiju as you could possibly get.  This is not what our parents had planned for you.  I can’t let you and Yancy do this-can’t let you ride that Jaeger.”  

She throws a couple punches at that but he knows her better than anyone, even Yancy and he blocks her blows easily.  She snarls but can’t fight him.

Can’t beat him.

He never lets her win.  

She can almost hear Pentecost again, in the San Francisco training LOCCENT, telling her that the moment she beats her partner all respect will be lost in the Drift.

Raleigh is not Yancy.

He never takes it easy on her.

If I could choose, she thinks idly as she struggles to break free of her brother’s grip, of his anger.  Of her anger.

“I won’t let you pilot that Jaeger, Jazmine!  It’s going to be the fucking death of both of you and I promised Mom I’d keep you safe!” he bellows, his fingers tight around her wrists and his eyes, the same exact shade as hers, blaze furiously just as the front door opens and their oldest brother appears in the living room doorway.  

“Shut the fuck up Raleigh,” Yancy snarls, his deep voice moving slowly around the room as he takes stock of the situation his siblings have placed themselves in; instantaneously his voice calms them, eases them back from the brink just a bit.  Raleigh and Jazmine break apart with barely coherent curses, their hackles still up but their feelings still relatively intact.

Yancy is glaring at both of them, a look of disappointment in his eyes.  It’s a look the younger kids are familiar with, something they haven’t seen since they buried their Mom five years before and that more than anything calms the waters a bit more.  But Yancy isn’t fooled-he has to beat this down before it destroys any of their Drifts.  Two of them need a perfect neural handshake and fighting together like preschooler’s isn’t going to make the Jaeger standing in the Anchorage Shatterdome move.  

Raleigh watches his brother carefully, his jaw tight and his eyes narrowing in calculation as he takes in his brother’s usual stoic expression; Yancy’s in full military dress, the leather of his jacket shining in the halflight and Raleigh shifts at the sight of another jacket hanging from his brother’s fingers.

It’s a woman’s jacket.

It sure as hell isn’t his.

“How could you Yancy?” he growls and he’s in his brother’s face now, every nerve in his body tingling at the thought of threatening the sacred older brother he and Jaz have always looked up to and respected.  

Yancy doesn’t back down.

Instead he hands Jazmine the jacket and as Raleigh’s teeth clench and he prepares to commit the worst treason a younger brother could commit against the eldest, Yancy slaps a thick file folder into his chest and snarls, “Read it, Raleigh.  Read it and understand why Pentecost forced me to choose Jaz.”  

Raleigh is speechless as Yancy tugs Jaz from the apartment and it takes him a good twenty minutes to realize the folder in his arms is a paper copy of their neural reports from the Jaeger trainings they’ve been taking part in for the past sixteen weeks.  

His specs are the first ones on the pile.  

The apartment is dark as he sags onto their ragged couch, folder spread across his lap and he almost wishes, as he begins to read, that he hadn’t drunk his last rationed beer.  

Compatible it reads, over and over.  Compatible but unpredictable.  

Not a good candidate for the program.  

Consider other siblings for the neural handshake.  

Compatible.

But unpredictable.

Dangerous.  

Consider other siblings.

The file ends up scattered across the floor and the apartment is empty when Yancy and Jazmine Becket finally return, several hours later, their leather jackets snug across their shoulders and their Jaeger’s name emblazoned along their backs.  

“Dammit.  Raleigh, no,” Yancy breathes as he takes in his brother’s empty bedroom and the scattered papers on the living room floor.  His hands tangle in his hair as he tries to process the loss of his brother but it’s so impossible.

They’ve protected and raised their sister together.

And they’ve buried their parents together.

This is a loss…

A loss he could never prepare for.  

“Dammit!”  

Jazmine sags to her knees beside the couch and stretches her fingers over the papers telling them just why Raleigh was perfect for them.

But not perfect enough for a Jaeger.

“Yancy,” she whispers as her brother stands silently cursing himself in the middle of their dark living room.  “What do we do now?”

Yancy is quiet for a moment and then he’s tugging her upright into his arms.  

“We fight,” he murmurs as he wraps her into a hug.  “We fight, just like Pentecost needs us too.  Raleigh…” he sighs and rubs her back firmly as she sniffles into his chest.  “Raleigh will come around.”  

Neither mention how unlikely those words seem in their dark living room, on the eve of their deployment.  

Neither mention how truly terrified they are for their brother.

For themselves.

For the Drift.  

It’s not the Becket way, admitting fear.  

Yancy doesn’t look at the papers bearing his name.

Doesn’t look at the words telling him just why he and Jaz are going to be the perfect co-pilots in the Mark III Jaeger.  

Doesn’t look at the words telling him just why he and Raleigh would have been the perfect in that same Jaeger.

Either way…

He’d have been betraying his family.

And that Jaeger would never have moved from the Anchorage Shatterdome.  

“I’m sorry,” he whispers as he tosses the file with all of their history into the trash can and pulls his ancient zippo from his pocket.  “It was the only way.”

The fire he lights is the only illumination in their tiny San Francisco home and as Jaz huddles under her blankets in her tiny bedroom and Yancy squats on the balcony, a trashcan at his feet and a rationed beer at his lips, he wonders if his brother will ever forgive him for this decision he and Pentecost have made.  

He wonders.

He hopes.

He doubts.  

He never sees his brother again.  

 


	3. i pray and i fail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a short one.
> 
> I'll be posting the next part in a moment.
> 
> -M

He barely recognizes her, when the medics finally admit him to the Anchorage infirmary.  It’s taken him an hour to get clearance, something he’ll never forgive Pentecost for, and when he finally slips silently into her tiny room he’s on the verge of collapse.  

He hasn’t slept for two days, hasn’t eaten since…

It doesn’t matter.  

His baby sister is broken in a hospital bed and a Jaeger they named is being carried to Oblivion Bay.  

And Yancy.

Yancy is _gone._

“Oh Jaz,” he whispers as he collapses into the metal chair beside her bed.  “Fucking hell, I’m _sorry.”_

She doesn’t stir, doesn’t open her eyes to gaze at him, doesn’t tell him it’s going to be all right.  The machines keep beeping, her lungs keep working and her heart keeps beating.  

But she’s not whole.

And she’s not going to look at him for a while.  

If ever.

Raleigh takes a deep breath and he barely feels himself sagging forward, barely notices his pounding forehead resting on the mattress beside her burned and fractured right hip.  The doctors made sure to tell him just what is wrong with his baby sister before admitting him and it’s a long laundry list of shit that’s gone wrong for her, for the little girl he used to push on the swingset in their backyard.  

If Yancy could see her…

Raleigh groans and chokes back a breathless curse as he tangles his fingers with hers, ever careful to not dislodge the small army of needles sticking out of her skin.  As he holds her, he can’t stop a prayer from slipping past his lips and if Jazmine was awake she’d probably snort and smack him upside the head.

It doesn’t make sense to pray anymore.

The world is ending.

And Yancy is still dead.  

“Mom, I’m sorry I failed you,” he prays to the only person he ever thinks to pray to when days go bad.  Lately it seems like his days are only bad, never good.  So he prays. “I’m sorry I let Jazza get in that robot and play soldier.  I didn’t know how to stop her, didn’t know how to stop Yancy.”  

His words don’t make him feel any better.

And they don’t help Jaz.  

He falls silent as the machines keeping his sister alive hum and beep and breathe in Jaz’s tiny room but he never stops praying.

Never stops thinking.

Hoping.

“God I’m sorry Jaz,” he whispers in his sleep and he doesn’t hear the door open behind him, doesn’t hear a metal chair joining his and someone settling their weary weight into it.  

He doesn’t hear a soft sigh and curse as this someone takes in the sleeping and haggard Beckets.  

Doesn’t hear the man beside him whispering, “I’m sorry too.”  

 


	4. the master, the commander, the undertaker

_The first time Stacker Pentecost sets eyes on the Becket siblings he sighs._

He knows the moment he sees Yancy’s quiet strength and Raleigh’s and Jaz’s fierce competitiveness that he has three perfect ranger candidates under his Dome.  The only issue is there’s three of them.  

Three.

And a Jaeger takes two to drive.  

Most times.

The two boys flank their sister, their eyes wary as they watch the men and women surrounding them and the girl bounces on her toes, itching to fight.  Pentecost can tell immediately she’s the baby of the family, the princess, the sacred sister.  He can already tell how much her brothers will sacrifice for her, how much blood they will be willing to spill at her feet.  He wonders which one will be strapping into the harness beside her.  Wonders what price she’ll pay for her brothers when the moment of reckoning comes.  

Pentecost wonders a lot of things.  

These siblings are tall, lanky kids raised hard and itching to destroy Kaiju.  They already move in sync with each other, the boys radiating around their sister like goddamn moons around a planet and Pentecost stops wondering.

He knows in that moment.  

Rangers.

Three of them.  

He wonders if he can talk to the Chinese about their three-armed prototype they’re starting to build in Hong Kong.  He wonders how he’s going to keep all of these kids alive, once he straps them into the Conn-Pods of the Jaegers the PPDC has allotted him.

The middle kid, the second brother is swaggering around some kids from Phoenix, talking himself up and Pentecost thinks he’s going to have a lot of paperwork to fill out in the coming months, about this particular brother; the sister is laughing, her head back and her blonde hair, the same shade as her brothers’, rippling down her back and the noise carries over the chaos filling his mess hall.  It’s a bright sound, full of hope and happiness.  Cockiness, only recruits can express when thrown together under a Shatterdome.

He doesn’t let it break him.  

“Watch them Tendo,” he murmurs as the new forty or so recruits are shouted into submission by the drill sergeant and are ordered into lines; they fall too instantly-most of them are military, while the few who aren’t are just jumpy enough to listen to anyone who shouts in their faces.  Pentecost’s eyes close wearily and he tries to fight off the headache growing in his temples.  “Watch them and keep me posted on their progress.”  

Tendo Choi is quiet at his side, his dark eyes thoughtful as he toys with the tablet in his hands but Pentecost knows his right-hand has heard and understood what he means.  

There are only three people in this Dome Stacker Pentecost cares about in this very moment.

And it will continue like this for the next six months.  

“I can only take two of you Yancy,” he tells the oldest Becket on the day he is forced to choose who exactly he wants riding the brand new Mark III in the Anchorage Shatterdome.  “I’m sorry but we both know what my choice will be.”

He’s not sorry at all.

He made his choice that day in San Francisco.  

He made his choice the moment Yancy Becket’s quiet gaze met his from across the mess hall and Jazmine Becket laughed at his side.  

Yancy stands straight and proud before him, the expression on his face an odd mixture of relief and betrayal.

“Of course sir,” he says stiffly, his deep voice calm and slow.  Even.  

He is already the perfect Ranger.  

Much like his sister.  

Blue eyes, pale and cold like the Pacific meet his bravely and a nerve ticks in his jaw.  “Let me tell him, Marshall.  Let me break it to Raleigh.”  

Pentecost hesitates for just a moment and then nods.  “Of course,” he growls as he folds his hands behind his back and considers one of the finest recruits he’s ever trained.  “You’ll be shipped to Anchorage at 0800.  With Jazmine Becket at your side.”

Yancy doesn’t even question the Marshall.

He knows as well as any of them just which one of his siblings is the perfect person to Drift with.  He knows what it will be like to Drift with Jaz knowing Raleigh isn’t the “perfect” Ranger.  

He knows.

And he blames Pentecost for it.

“We’ll be there sir,” he says with a sharp salute and faint growl in his voice.

Pentecost sighs as the door closes behind him and rubs his forehead.  Two perfect Rangers for a brand new Mark III Jaeger.  

One perfect neural handshake.

With Raleigh Becket lurking in the shadows for each ride.  

“Just so long as they don’t chase the RABIT,” he mutters as he turns to his windows overlooking Oblivion Bay and the hulking masses of his Jaegers rotting in its toxic waters.  “This better fucking work.”

 


	5. our monsters in our hearts

_It hurts to breathe when she comes out of the Drift._  

Every single _fucking_ time.

She doesn’t tell the medics or Yancy though that she’s in pain and they’re all too busy saving the world to notice if one of their Rangers is a little short of breath every time she unstraps from a harness.

She can’t help thinking at night, when she lies on her back in her bunk above Yancy’s and tries to catch her breath and keep from crying as pain wracks her lungs, that her other brother would know immediately what’s wrong with her.  

Raleigh would have taken one look at her and dragged her ass to the medics.  

Raleigh would have Drifted with her just once in Gipsy and called her on her bullshit.  

It’s all her fucking fault-if she hadn’t climbed the tree after Raleigh when they were kids, if she hadn’t missed her footing almost six feet up, if she hadn’t fallen on her chest and not her feet…

She wouldn’t be here now with a tiny sliver of rib pressing against her left lung, wrapping her chest in cords of agonizing pain every time she moves her legs in Gipsy’s harness.

It’s a miracle that Yancy never notices, that Tendo never picks up on the pain in her scans, that Gipsy herself doesn’t falter through a handshake every time that sliver of rib pricks her lung.

Maybe it’s a figment of her imagination, the pain.  The difficulty in breathing.  

Maybe it’s her penance for screwing Raleigh over.

Maybe…

Maybe she deserves this.

“Left hemisphere engaged,” she says every single fucking day as she and Yancy go out on Miracle Mile and no one can see past her grin and the fierce glow in her eyes as Gipsy starts to waken around her and Yancy.  “Let’s ride boys.”

It hurts to breathe when she comes out of the Drift.  

And no one ever seems to notice.

**

Raleigh wakes to Jaz whimpering and sobbing in her sleep and he surges out of his chair to grip her shoulders tightly and to talk her down as she starts to thrash in her bed.

“Hey kid,” he says calmly, his voice even despite the exhaustion wracking his body and clouding his eyes.  Despite the fear he feels when he catches sight of the wicked burns marring her skin and the bloody bandages wrapping her torso.  That protective urge every older brother has when it comes to his siblings at the sight of them injured begins to take control over him and he grits his teeth and closes his eyes briefly, seeking to keep calm.  To be quiet.  To not go out into the LOCCENT and destroy anyone who may have helped hurt his sister.  Helped slaughter his brother.  “Hey, hey, I’m here.”

Jazmine is twisting against his hands, sobbing incoherently,her voice ragged and hysterical and Raleigh can make out a few words, a few sayings from their childhood they used to shout at each other from their tree house or bikes; it doesn’t take much to realize she’s ghosting.  He may not be a fully trained Ranger but he jockeyed around with the real ones for long enough to pick up on the urban legends tied up with the giant robots they rode against the Kaiju.  He knows what’s happening to his baby sister, knows there’s still a bit of Yancy vibrating through her skull and she’s going through overload because of it.  

He can’t see her eyes.  

Can’t see the extent of the damage Gipsy’s caused for himself.

“Jazmine, you need to breathe,” he murmurs, seeking his brother’s easy calm, seeking the hard-won peace he’s found in the past few years since he left his family for good.  “Jazza, baby, you’re safe.  You made it out of Gipsy Danger.”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

She screams and strikes out when she hears the name of her Jaeger and tears begin squeezing past her closed eyelids with the force of her ghost panic, with the force of her pain; Raleigh winces at the agony in her voice as she sobs one word.

“ _Yancy!_ ”

The sound of his sister screaming his brother’s name almost breaks him and he bows his head against her forehead for a moment and mutters a few curses to himself.  She’s strong, strong in her pain and her panic and it’s no wonder she got Gipsy to the shore on her own.  No wonder she rode the Jaeger solo.  

“Jazza, please,” he whispers, tears beginning to prick his eyes as he slips up into the bed beside her and navigates through the maze of wires and tubes leading from her burned and broken limbs so he can rest against the head of the bed with her in his lap.  “Jaz, please, don’t cry,” he whispers over and over as he cradles her head beneath his chin and rocks her instinctively in his arms.  “Please, please don’t cry.”  

It takes him a second to realize he’s not the only one holding her broken body still, that his voice isn’t the only one vibrating through the room, trying to calm her.  

“Keep her steady Raleigh,” the deep voice murmurs at his side and it’s something out of his fucking memories, that fucking voice.  

“Pentecost,” he mutters as he cradles Jaz into his arms and finally catches sight of the PPDC’s most important Marshall.  “Get your fucking hands off of her.”

His blue eyes blaze furiously, so much like his siblings’ and Pentecost slowly raises his hands above his head, raises them from Jazmine’s ankles.  

“Sorry,” he grits out and as Raleigh holds his baby sister in his arms and tries to keep from falling apart, he wonders if the Marshall has _ever_ apologized to anyone.  

He doubts it.  

The room falls into an uncomfortable silence as the two men watch each other warily and Jazmine slowly breaks free of her ghosts; her voice is the only sound, besides the machines and Raleigh winces every time she whispers Yancy’s name or says she’s sorry.  He strokes his fingers over her hair, over her battered hands, constantly seeking to comfort, constantly hoping she’ll forgive him for abandoning her.  

It’s almost impossible to believe that he’s here, holding her.  

It’s been three years since he last set eyes on his family.

And one’s dead now.  

“Tell me what happened,” he says when she is sleeping once more and the medics have deemed her stable.  To a point.  They dose her once more, with painkillers, antibiotics and stuff to beat the radiation that spilled free of Gipsy’s failed turbine.  Anything to keep her running.  To make her whole.

It’s a lot of fucking meds.

She’d hate it, if she knew.

“Tell me what went wrong.  Tell me what happened to my brother and that goddamned Jaeger they jockeyed.”  

He won’t say the Jaeger’s name in front of his sister again.

Not after Jaz’s ghosting.  

Pentecost is seated beside her bed again, now that she’s no longer writhing in agony, his head bowed into his hands and Raleigh can’t help thinking the Marshall is old now.

 _Old_.

Ragged around the edges.

They’re all ragged now though, battered.

Broken.

The end of the world and all that.  

“Come with me,” Pentecost says after a moment and he’s standing over the two remaining Becket’s now, his eyes shadowed with his own pain.

His own ghosts.

Raleigh hesitates for a long moment before finally rising from the bed and easing Jazmine back against the pillows.  She whimpers in her sleep, her face pale with pain and drugs but she doesn’t wake.

He sighs and rubs his hands firmly over his face, uselessly trying to wake himself up.

To make sense of this nightmare.    
It doesn’t work of course.  

Not much will anymore.

Monsters are crawling out of the sea, metal robots are rotting in Oblivion Bay and Yancy Becket is still dead.

Nightmares after nightmares...

He follows Pentecost from his sister’s room after a long moment of silence and finds the man overlooking the Anchorage LOCCENT, back ramrod straight and chin tilted back as he watches his crews welcoming a Sikorsky chopper bearing the Australian PPDC branch’s logo on its side.  Two men Raleigh recognizes from television broadcasts of past Kaiju attacks, step out of the chopper as he arrives at Pentecost’s side but the Marshall does not move to greet them.  He simply watches the younger of the two scoop a drooling bulldog into his arms before lowering him from the Sikorsky and the oldest shake hands with Tendo Choi.  His eyes are shadowed, his jaw tense and Raleigh wonders briefly what about these two irritates him.  

Maybe it’s the dog.

Or maybe it’s the punk’s cocky attitude.  

Raleigh’s eyes narrow as he takes in the flurry of activity and the Marshall’s usual stoicism but he doesn’t ask what the Marshall wants of him.  He doesn’t turn tail and run back to Jaz, back to the Wall he’s been helping build up the Alaska coastline.  

He doesn’t run.

“Your sister was one of the best pilots I’ve ever trained you know,” Pentecost murmurs as he slips a tiny tin marked with the PPDC medical quadrant’s seal into his pocket.  “She and Yancy made a great team, not the most smooth in a neural handshake sometimes, that’s for sure, but then very few are absolutely perfect.  I’ve only seen it in two other Jaegers but Vladivostok and Hong Kong are hush hush about those teams.  The problem wasn’t with the handshake though when they went up against Knifehead, it was them being stubborn and Jazmine being noble.”  He sighs and rubs his chin briefly, his eyes shadowed as he takes in his Shatterdome’s activities and studies the tense man standing at his side.  Becket’s are fierce, the Marshall has learned that the hard way, but this one.

Raleigh always seemed the strongest of the three.

Which was why he was passed over for Jazmine.

She could take orders from Yancy.

This one…

 _Doesn’t matter now_ , he thinks sadly as he folds his arms and prepares to destroy the remaining brother once and for all.   _I lost Yancy on my watch._

Raleigh has a chance to briefly wonder just what’s going on in the Marshall’s head, before the man is turning to him, every movement economical and clipped.

And he asks, “Do you remember your Jaeger training Becket?”

The way he says it…

He doesn’t even have to clarify _why_ he’s asking such a stupid question.

Remember Jaeger training?

 _How could anyone_ ever _forget?_

Raleigh’s never struck a superior officer before in his life.  

But then, Pentecost really isn’t his superior is he?

Since Raleigh never got to pilot a Jaeger.

“Fuck you sir,” he bellows as he shakes out his fist and the Marshall spits a glob of bloody spit out at his boots and doesn’t say a single word.  “ _Fuck you._ ”

He doesn’t wait to hear the Marshall’s reprimand.  

Doesn’t wait to hear his orders.

Doesn’t see the Australian’s turn to stare at him, doesn’t hear the dog bark, or Tendo shout his name.  

Doesn’t.

_Care._

He goes back to Jazmine.

And he locks her door.  

“I’m sorry Jazza,” he whispers as he strokes her hair and cradles her bruised fingers in his.  “So, so sorry.”  

 


	6. for the glory of

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've got this thing for Jaeger pilots and showers.
> 
> You've been warned. 
> 
> -M

_The first time she lets Chuck Hansen get under her armor is the day they kill M-19 in Manila and he takes all of the glory for himself._

And tells her that one thing…

The one thing no Ranger should say to another.

“You realize you weren’t the only goddamn team out there, fighting for Manila, right _mate_?” she shouts in Chuck’s face as her fingers tingle and reporters turn their cameras in their direction.  She doesn’t care.  

Doesn’t even _look_ at them.

She almost punches him again.

She’s watched Chuck Hansen wrangle all of the glory, put all of that fucking Kaiju’s gore on Striker Eureka, blessed, angelic _Mark V_ ,  and if there’s one thing she won’t stand for, it’s some jumped up bleached out Aussie _twat_ calling her baby a piece of shit.  

The sound of his nose snapping beneath her knuckles is the most satisfying _fucking_ sound she’s ever heard in her life.  

The _fucking hell, you bat!_ that falls from his lips as he crumples is the second most satisfying.  

She shakes out her hand a few times and wonders if she can hit him again, or if that would be considered overkill.  

The blonde Australian _ass_ is rolling and groaning and she feels nothing but disgust.  Disgust and maybe a little sadness.

Because this is what the PPDC deems worthy of a shiny new Mark V.  

 _This_ is what’s moving up the ranks to replace the old-timers.

_Disgusting._

“Call Gipsy a rust-bucket again and I’ll break your balls,” she hisses as she bends over Hansen, who’s sprawled on the ground beneath her, his eyes narrowed above his bloodied and clutching fingers.  He’s watching her with something like calculation in his eyes and she really doesn’t give a flying shit.  “Call _my_ Jaeger worthless and nothing but _back-up_ and I’ll feed that fat dog of yours to the Russians in brown gravy and dumplings,” she continues, her hands tangling in the collar of his bullshit bomber jacket.  

Hansen makes a choking noise from behind his fingers and then Yancy is there, his arms around her waist and his voice a mellow roar in her ear.   _Come on Jazza, come on_ , he murmurs and Raleigh’s pet name is enough to jerk her back to reality but it’s not quite enough for her to resist one last kick at Hansen.  

“Watch it, you bastard,” she shouts as Yancy hauls her over his shoulder and the cameras flash in their direction and Herc Hansen starts shoving through the reporters on his way to save his precious boy.  “The next time I’m _back-up_ , you might find Gipsy’s fist up Striker’s ass, _mate!_ ”

She’s panting, panting and in pain when Yancy deposits her in their borrowed bunk and she’s cursing both Hansen and her own stupidity.  

Yancy simply sits beside the door, crosses his legs and pulls a chunk of wood out of his pocket and his knife and starts wittling.

Jaz clutches her ribs and paces, Hansen’s blood still on her fingers and tries to regain her sanity. Images of Manila burning, of Jaegers rising out of the sea and the Kaiju tearing whole buildings off their foundations consume her and her hands clench.

“I’m going to the ladies,” she snarls mid-pace and Yancy glances up in time to see her yank the door open and step down onto their landing.

“We don’t have a ladies room, Jaz,” he bellows before the door closes.  He can just make out her flipping him off and then the heavy door thuds close.  “Cocky kids,” he mutters as he turns back to the chunk of wood he’s been carving for several days now.  

The E-Block showers are not empty when she slips through the doors but one look at her face and one snarled _scram_ clears the place of all crew members and she sighs before heading for the one shower in the Manila Bay Shatterdome that has hot water.

She doesn’t see the one person who remained after she arrived.

Doesn’t hear him tearing tissues into small pieces to shove up his nostrils.

Not until it’s too late.

“Hello _Jazza.”_

She sighs and her eyes close wearily at the sound of his growling voice echoing through the mostly empty restroom, clothes shedding as he prowls up on her and steps into the cool tile of her shower. “Don’t call me that Hansen,” she growls as she lets the hot stream of water wash her aches and Gipsy’s grime from her skin, hoping her ignoring him will make him go away.

She knows it won’t work.

She has to work hard at not jumping when his arms circle her waist, when he pulls her gently back into his chest, her ass pressing into his damp jeans and the bulge they barely succeed at hiding there.

“Will you really shove Gip’s fist up my ass if I take on a Kaiju without you, Jaz?” he whispers in her ear, his lips trailing gently over the outer shell to suck water from the hollow.  She shivers and finally turns to face him.

“You know I will, ass,” she snarls as he grins and runs his fingers over her skin, the calluses of his touch causing her skin to bump and her heart to race.  “You didn’t need to stand between me and that Category III.  And you _know_ it.”  

His blue eyes are shadowed, hidden behind damp eyelashes and perfect pearls of water and she can’t help wincing at the dark bruises starting to ring them and the small trickle of blood still easing from his left nostril.  

Before she can stop herself her hand is rising to cup his cheek and her fingers are pressing gently into the hollow of his eye.  

He doesn’t stop watching her, touching her and she knows what he’s going to say next.

And she dreads it.

“I have to protect you Jazmine,” he says, his voice rough and agonized as she touches him and he holds her close, close in the safety of his arms.  “It scared the piss out of me today when I saw Gipsy’s left hemi take that damn Kaiju’s hit.  I can’t...I can’t-”

She stops him.

Stops him from saying the one thing a Ranger should never say to another.  

_I can’t lose you._

“I was fine Hansen, _fine,_ ” she snaps, some of her usual bravado still in her voice but he does not release her.

Does not believe her.  

“You undermined me,” she says, desperately trying to put some distance between them, desperate to ignore his agonized expression and warm, warm body.  “You undermined Yancy’s and my Drift by putting Striker in Gipsy’s path and you almost wrecked the mission!”  

Her words are not fierce anymore.

They are panicked.

And she’s shivering now, shivering in Chuck Hansen’s arms.

All she can see is Striker turning in Gipsy’s direction as the Kaiju’s claws tear into her left arm, all she can feel is the Jaeger’s agony as those claws sought to tear her free.  All she can hear is Chuck’s voice in her head, screaming at her to hold on.

Her.

Not Yancy.

Not Gipsy Danger.

_Her._

“Why did you take that Kaiju on by yourself?” she whispers as he pulls her close and strokes her damp hair and hums absently in the echoing silence of the E-Block showers.  “Why did you force the Kaiju away from Gipsy and take the glory for yourself?”

He stops stroking.

Stops humming.

And starts laughing.

“ _Glory?_ ” he repeats in absolute disbelief as she blinks water from her eyes and meets his gaze through the shower’s steam.  “I didn’t do it for _glory_ Jazza,” he growls as his hands rise to grip her cheeks, to pull her face up to his.  “I didn’t do it for _Manila_ either,” he continues as he lowers his face and presses his forehead to hers.  “I did it for _you_ , Jazmine.”  

He kisses her then and his blood mingles with the water on her lips and she tries not to cry.  Tries not to hold him too tightly.

He’s going to say the one thing a Ranger should never say to another Ranger.

And she can’t even stop him.  

Because she is going to say the same thing to him, one day.

_I can’t lose you._

_I can’t._

 


	7. kill me dead

_Let me through!  Let me through the goddamn door!_

Raleigh looks up from Jazmine’s chart and scowls as the bellowing beyond her door grows louder and the doorknob starts to rattle; he glances just once in his baby sister’s direction and then with a sigh he stands and heads for the door.

 _I have to see her-I have every right to be in that room you bastards-more than that asshole who calls himself her brother!  He hasn’t been around in years!  So_ _let me through the_ goddamned bloody door _!_

Raleigh hesitates at that, his hand suspended towards the handle and his jaw clenches as he tries to keep his anger at bay.  But it’s hard-the Australian is loud and abrasive, even with three inches of solid metal between him and Raleigh-it takes everything he has not to yank the door open and smash the bastard’s face into said three inches.

 _Ranger Becket is resting and her brother has requested no one disturb her,_ Jazmine’s doctor says, her voice calm despite the man confronting her and Raleigh has a moment to reflect that the poor woman must be used to facing down Rangers in her infirmary.  

It was him just a few short hours ago shouting in her face after all.

And she barely batted an eye.

His lips twitch into a tiny smile as the Australian blusters but the calm doesn’t last long.

 _Let me through the fucking door Summers,_ he snarls and there’s a faint thud against the door causing small vibrations to tremble up Raleigh’s arm; he scowls and a nerve begins to tick in his jaw at this obvious display of abuse but the Australian is still going.

And what he says next is enough to blow everything that has happened to the Becket’s and their Jaeger out of the water.

 _Let me in to see my fiance, Summers,_ now, the Australian hisses and there’s another thud but Raleigh doesn’t notice.

The door flies open and the doctor squawks in surprise and horror as he comes tearing out of the room to smash bodily into the Australian who has the balls to say _that_ about Jazza.  

Who has the balls to _come here_.

If Yancy knew…

Did Yancy know?

He’s shouting, unintelligible curses in the bastard’s face and there are doctors screaming for him to calm down but he can’t.

He can’t stop.

He _can’t._

“Get the fuck out of here _mate_ ,” he snarls as he slams the bastard’s head once, twice, into the dingy grey tile of the Anchorage infirmary’s ICU.  “Get the _fuck_ away from my sister!”

The Australian-his name is embroidered on his fancy bomber jacket ( _don’t think of Yancy, don’t_ ) but Raleigh is seeing red and he is far beyond reason.

His brother is dead.

Jazmine may never open her beautiful blue eyes.

And Gipsy Danger is sunk in Oblivion Bay.

There’s no point to reason anymore.

“Get the fuck away from my family,” he hisses as strong arms loop around his chest and he’s yanked bodily from the sprawled body of the punk-ass bastard who thought he could swagger his way into Jazza’s room.  “Did you hear me?”

The Australian spits blood and a broken tooth and snarls a curse in Raleigh’s direction.  “She’s not your family anymore _Riley,_ ” he growls as another man, wearing a bomber jacket like his, appears at his side and offers his hand.

The punk ignores it and levers himself up on his own, where he sways before Raleigh, his face a massive bruise and his blonde hair dripping blood onto the fur liner of his jacket.  He takes one step in Raleigh’s direction, where he stands with two doctors and several security personnel holding him back, and says the one thing that will forever damn him.

“She’s _mine._ ”  

 


	8. our love is a monster

“ _Do you love him?_ ”

Jazmine glances up from the bracket she’s trying to replace on Gipsy’s left hip and frowns down at her brother who’s just appeared on the strut beneath her perch.  “Love?” she repeats as Yancy folds his arms and glares up at her.  “Love who?”

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.  “You know who I’m talking about Jaz,” he snaps as she bends back to the Jaeger’s joint and continues struggling with the heavy wrench she clutches.  Irritation is rife in his voice and she sighs before turning from battered metal to face the one person in her world she should never lie to.

And she lies.

“Of course I don’t _love_ Chuck Hansen,” she says with a snort and dramatic roll of her eyes.  ( _Raleigh would see me, he would know…_ ) “He’s an ass and he’s irritating.  Don’t be a moron Yancy,” she continues as she steps off of Gip’s hip onto the platform beside her brother.  

Pale blue eyes, the exact shade as hers, meet hers and a single brow rises as he waits to see if she breaks.  

She doesn’t.

And she adds another thing to the list of things to hide in the Drift.  

She’ll have to talk to Newt some more.

Add some more walls.  

Hide _everything._

Yancy sighs after a moment and absently reaches out to rub grease from her cheek.  “Watch him Jaz,” he murmurs as she pulls away from him with a giggle and swats his hand playfully with her wrench.  He dodges her easily and still continues gazing seriously at her.  “I don’t trust him.”

Jaz’s smile deepens and she chuckles.  “You don’t trust anyone who shows any bit of interest in me big brother,” she gripes as she wraps her arm around his neck and presses the platform’s button that lowers them to the ground floor.  “Tendo is still terrified you’re going to scalp him in the middle of the night.”

Yancy sighs melodramatically at that and before she can stop him he swings her bodily over his shoulder and drops jarringly onto the floor of the Shatterdome’s repair bay.  She shrieks and smacks him repeatedly but he doesn’t let her go, he simply hauls her from the bay towards their quarters.  “Tendo Choi would totally deserve a scalping baby sister,” he grumbles as their crew greets them with laughter and jeers and Jaz grumbles into the small of his back.

“You’re an ass Yancy,” she mumbles unintelligibly into her brother’s leather jacket.  “Almost as big of an ass as Chuck.”

She doesn’t realize her mistake, her calling Hansen by his first name, until Yancy haults and a familiar accented voice speaks from in front of them.

“Been checking out my ass, then Miss Becket?” Chuck Hansen says cockily and Jaz’s heart lurches in her chest at the laughter lurking there beneath the bravado and she struggles with Yancy.

Who doesn’t let her go.

“What are you doing here Hansen?” he asks, his voice as stiff as his body and Jaz winces as his arm tightens painfully around her hips.  

“Yancy, please,” she whispers as she tries to crane around his broad back to see Chuck.  “Please don’t be stupid.”

Both men are glaring at each other, their eyes locked and their jaws tense and she can tell immediately that someone is going to do something very, very stupid very, very soon.

And it sure as hell won’t be her.

Chuck shifts, the first to break the tense eye contact and both Becket’s stiffen even further as he tucks his hand into his jacket pocket; he stills and meets her upside down gaze.  “It’s okay, yeah?” he murmurs his voice soothing, calm.

Something from her nights.

From hidden liasions in showers.

Empty bunks.

Storage rooms.

Conn-Pods.  

Or borrowed flats in Vladivostok.

“It’s all right Yancy,” she whispers and her voice is shaking.  Or is it her body.

She can’t tell.

Won’t ever be able to tell.

Chuck is removing something from his pocket and the blood is rushing in her ears, deafening and demanding.

She doesn’t hear Yancy curse.

Doesn’t hear Chuck’s words.

Doesn’t…

“A _ring?_ ” she sputters in absolute shock as a tiny box is held in her direction and Yancy drops her.  “What the _fuck_ Hansen?!”

Chuck simply grins and clicks it open, absolutely confident and at ease.

He’s a world-famous Jaeger pilot with five kills under his belt and a brand new Jaeger to play with.

Who could ever turn him down?

“Will you be mine Jazza Becket?” he asks as she staggers to her feet and smudges more of Gipsy’s grime onto her skin.  

She doesn’t answer.

Can’t answer.

It scares her to even try.

Because in the end…

She’s already his.

Body and soul.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she breathes as she turns tail and runs back to the one person she can trust in the Anchorage Shatterdome.  “Fuck, what do I do Gip?” she whispers as she scrambles up her Jeager’s headless form and huddles in her dark chest.  

_What do I do?_

**

_Gipsy is breaking around me._

_She’s breaking._

_I’ve broken my Jaeger._

_What do I do?!_

What do I do?!

Where is Yancy?!

“Yancy...”

 


	9. fathers and sons

“He has every right to be with her, you know.”  

Chuck Hansen glances in his father’s direction and snorts painfully through his bruised nose.  “Yeah, right,” he growls sullenly as the Doctor Summers applies more liquid bandage to the lacerations on his skull and cheeks.  “He’s got the balls to show up now and be her older brother, now that she’s almost died.”  His hand fists in anger upon the thin tissue paper covering the exam table he’s been helped to and as the paper crinkles he sneers and closes his eyes.  “He has no right to Jazza.”  

Herc Hansen sighs and lowers himself to the single chair resting beside the door of the exam room.  

He doesn’t say anything right off, doesn’t defend either Becket or his boy.

Simply sits and lets Max drool on his boots.  

Chuck shifts in the silence and as Summers hums absently around him and slowly knits him back together he glances at his father.  Herc still doesn’t speak, simply folds his arms over his chest and stretches his legs out beside Max.

“You know what he’s been doing for the past three years, Dad?” he finally blurts when the silence has gotten to be too much.  “Do you know what that shit has been wasting his entire life on?”

Herc knows.

Pentecost has never let the last Becket slip his notice.

And Herc knows Pentecost better than most.

Some things are mutual.

Even in the PPDC.

He shrugs.

Chuck snarls and launches his diatribe.  “The bastard’s been building the Wall, Dad,” he shouts, absolutely furious.  “He’s been building and constructing the thing that’s going to put us from a job!”  He punctuates each word with a sharp jab in the direction of the exam room door and Herc hides his smile.  

It’s the ultimate offense to his boy, that Wall.

With good reason.

But…

“He had to do something useful Chuck,” he murmurs as he bends towards Max and scratches his ears.  The dog sighs happily and continues drooling on his boots.  “He wasn’t going to sit around, twiddling his thumbs while his entire family sacrificed everything for the PPDC.”

He knows no matter how hard he defends Becket though, his boy will never forgive and never forget.

Raleigh Becket thrashed him and Jazmine Becket almost died.

Chuck was never much for reason before this.

“He should get out of my way,” Chuck growls as Dr. Summers continues fixing him up and Max pants at their feet.  “He doesn’t deserve to be with her.”

Herc sighs and closes his eyes.

He won’t fight this.

This is Becket’s battle.

“Maybe you should let Jazmine decide that for herself,” he murmurs, too soft for his boy to hear and as the door closes and Dr. Summers packs up her equipment, a pitying look on her face, he sighs once more and levers himself to his feet.

He won’t fight his son.

But he will keep him in line.

Just like always.

 


	10. warm

Jazmine has one week of leave in 2019, just one, that falls near the New Year, several weeks after a drop in Manila that took three Jaegers to finish the job and killed two Rangers.  

She spends it in Sydney with another Ranger and his dog.  

They don't speak of showers or brothers.  

They simply  _be_ who they want to be.

“Do you think the Kaiju will ever stop coming through the Breach, Hansen?” she asks one afternoon as the sun washes over their sprawled, naked bodies and Max licks her toes happily.  

Chuck snorts and drags her closer through the tangled sheets, jostling Max, who simply shuffles back to her feet and she giggles into Chuck’s throat as he pulls her across his chest.  “I hope they don’t Jazza,” he growls into the hollow of her ear.  “Gives me a chance to keep throwing punches without getting in trouble.”

She smacks him lightly and nips at his jaw.  “Yeah, well it’s Striker who’s throwing the punches, not you Hansen, so I’m not sure that counts,” she murmurs as he pulls her hips over his and his mouth begins to trail down her throat and over the soft swells of her breasts.  

“It counts, darling, it counts,” he whispers, his teeth grazing over her pebbled nipples, forcing a groan from her in response to his touch.  “It counts as much as this does.”  

Her eyes flash open at that, at the feel of him fiddling with the ring on her finger, the ring she finally put on two days ago after he climbed up to her Jaeger's heart and kissed her.  He’s watching her carefully, gauging her reaction to his touch and his words and she sighs.

“Chuck, please,” she whispers as she struggles to pull away from his arms and his dog.  He simply wraps his arms around her shoulders and rolls so she lies trapped beneath him.  “Chuck!” she shrieks as he growls dangerously in the back of his throat.  “Let me go!”

“No,” he snarls as he kisses her jaw and tangles his fingers in her hair.  “No I won’t let you go, Becket.”  He pulls back just a bit so he can see her and his smile softens as she stretches into his touch and her hair tumbles through his fingers.  “I love it when you call me Chuck, Jazza.”

She stops wriggling at that and takes in his cheeky grin and his tousled hair before sighing.  “Fine _Hansen_ ,” she growls as she wraps her legs around his hips and pulls his head in for a kiss.  “Fine.  I’ll marry you.”  His eyes widen but she doesn’t let him interrupt her. “Before my leave is over.”

“Today?” he asks, excitement forcing his accent to thicken which in turn makes her skin bump and her pupils widen.   

“After I’ve had my way with you Ranger,” she croaks as she pulls him closer to her chest and Max snores at their sides.  

Chuck Hansen laughs and rocks his hips against hers, purring in her ear as her eyes roll into the back of her head and her back arches under his firm hands.  “Have your way with me then, you fiend, and then we’re off to the chapel.”  

The sun washes over their skin, warm and comforting.

It is a memory she brings with her into the last Drifts she has with Yancy in Gipsy Danger's Conn Pod.  

Warm sun.

Warm hands.

Warm dog.

Warm.

She doesn't get a chance to marry him that afternoon; just as they're tugging on clothes, Max panting happily at their heels, a familiar alert sounds and one Ranger is summoned to save the day.  The other gets left behind, his ring still on her finger and an itch to fight in her skin, but by the time he finally makes it back to shore a day later, his father's Jaeger is shattered and her leave is over. 

She doesn't marry her Ranger that one bit of leave she has in 2019.

She goes back to Anchorage, to her Jaeger and her brother and for two months they fight and they Drift and she waits for another bit of leave that will give her a chance to get to Sydney once more.

It never comes.

A Category Three, codenamed Knifehead, gets between her and Sydney one night in February.  

So she Drifts and she remembers. 

Warm sun. 

Warm hands.

Warm dog.

Warm.  

“Chuck,” she whispers into the Drift each time she is deployed, her brother at her side and their Jaeger in fighting prime all around them.  “I’m sorry.”  

She wishes she could tell him that in person. 

She wishes...

For warm sun.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you'll probably notice I changed the title of the story-surprise!
> 
> Sorry about that-it was driving me crazy-super long title for a super long story. 
> 
> Ridiculous. 
> 
> Basically same premise just a bit shorter and an easier mouthful. 
> 
> I'm nearing the end-writing wise at least-publishing I still have a bit to go. 
> 
> Hopefully you all are sticking with it and are still liking it! 
> 
> -M


	11. the weary, the broken

Chuck Hansen won’t shut up.  

Raleigh sighs and rubs his eyes with bruised and battered knuckles before glancing at his pale sister.  Jazmine has been restless, ever since Hansen reappeared outside of her door demanding access to her, almost as if she can hear him, hear the anger in his voice and wants to tell him to be quiet.  

Raleigh’s teeth grit at the knowledge that his sister said ‘yes’ without telling him, without feeling the need to tell him but he can’t stop hearing the Australian’s voice echoing in the hallway.  Can’t get away from him, no matter how badly he wishes he could.

He briefly wonders if she and Yancy fought about the man who asked her for her hand.  He wonders if his oldest brother hated the thought of their free-spirit of a sister settling down with a jockey.  He wonders if his mother would have any words of wisdom she’d share with her sons and daughter.  

He wonders a lot of things.

“Why’d you do it Jaz?” he whispers to himself, his fingers gently chafing the back of her hand.  “Why’d you do this to yourself?”

He knows why of course-it’s something he understands despite never having actually piloted a Jaeger or fought off a Kaiju.  He knows because he’s stood at the top of the Wall in Sitka and looked out over the Pacific and wondered.

Wondered how long he has to live.  

He knows because he’s Drifted with his sister, even if it was just in a simulator, and he’s seen her inner thoughts.

He’s seen her gaze at pictures of their parents when they were happy and he knows deep down that sometimes surviving alone is worse than dying.  

He knows.

Because he’s been doing it for three years.  

A fist slams on the door and a voice groans behind metal, Jazza, darling please, let me in to see her.  Raleigh’s head turns just enough so he can glare at the door from the corner of his eye but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t move because he can’t believe Jazmine would ever want to survive at the end of the world with such an egotistical idiot. He can’t believe…

There’s no ring on her finger but a faint tan line trails just below the knuckle.  He strokes it gently, thinking, wondering.  

Jazmine, please, Hansen whispers from behind the door but Raleigh still doesn’t move, still doesn’t want to share.  

Still.  

He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.  “What do I do Yancy?” he whispers to the nearly silent room. “What do I do?  What would you do?”  

It’s then that Jazmine groans and her hand, the one not resting under Raleigh’s, clenches and his skin bumps; it’s the first sound she has made since sobbing Yancy’s name, the first sound in hours other than his broken platitudes and he tries to keep calm.

Tries.  

Fails.  

“Chuck,” she whispers, her voice ragged and Raleigh’s eyes widen as tears begin to squeeze past her eyelids.  “I’m sorry.”

The sound his chair makes as it flies backwards is loud in the tiny and mostly silent room but he doesn’t notice.  He simply yanks her door open and stretches out a hand to tangle in the collar of the bellowing blonde beast outside of her room.

“Inside.  Now,” he snarls as he jerks Chuck Hansen inside and slams the door closed in the faces of the concerned medics gathered outside.  “And shut the hell up.”  

The medics share a glance but the room is silent.  After a moment the head nurse sighs and places her hands on her companion’s elbows.  

“Come along boys,” she murmurs in the still silence of the Anchorage Infirmary.  “Let’s leave them to it for a bit.”

One of the younger medics, a recent posting from the San Francisco Shatterdome swallows nervously.  “Are you sure it’s okay to leave them alone Nurse?” he asks as they make their way slowly towards the nurse’s station just a few feet from Ranger Becket’s room.  “They did just, uhm, brawl together a little bit ago.”

The nurse sighs and glances at them both before easing herself down into her chair and rubbing her forehead wearily.  “Jazmine will keep them in line,” she murmurs before turning to her charts and Marshal Pentecost’s reports.  

The words _extensive damage_ frequent the reports and her charts.

Sometimes referring to the girl lying in a hospital bed just a few feet away.

Sometimes referring to the Jaeger now lying in pieces in Oblivion Bay.

The young nurse sighs once more as her assistants settle at her side and wait for Doctor Summers to return from her rounds or possibly for another fight to break out between the two men standing over their last remaining Ranger and she picks up her pen.

_The extent of the damage to Ranger Becket’s spine is inconclusive as of now, but Doctor Summers expects to know once and for all whether her spine is beyond repair before morning._

_I’m sorry_ , she thinks and almost writes within the Ranger’s chart.  

 _I’m sorry we can’t save her_.

Her pen shakes for a moment and as Ranger Becket’s door is thrown open and the tall Australian ranger she’s supposedly engaged to stumbles through, his hand pressed to his lips and his eyes wide with horror, she writes, Ranger Becket is unfit for the Jaeger program.  A replacement will be required.  

She does not move to assist the ranger, nor does she respond when the Becket girl’s brother appears in the doorway, just as weary as the Australian.  

Instead she sets her pen aside and folds her hands over the files she’s been trying to complete for the Marshal for the past few hours.  Her eyes close wearily as the two men face off and she tries, tries to give them some privacy.  Tries to let them grieve together in their own way.

But she can’t keep from hearing Becket sigh and murmur, “She’s paralyzed, Hansen.  Her spine was shattered when the Kaiju took Yancy.  She’s...she’s never going to jockey a Jaeger again.”

“No,” Hansen growls fiercely, his eyes cold and his jaw a writhing knot of denial and tension.  “No, she lived for that Jaeger.  She won’t stand for that.”

Becket simply shrugs and leans in the doorway.

There was no more fight in him, the nurse realizes.  

No more…

Strength.

“She’s going to have to,” he says after a long moment of silence and turns back to his sister’s room.  “That Jaeger...That Jaeger destroyed everything.”  

The door clicks closed on his words and Hansen flinches in the process of sliding down the wall to collapse upon the floor.  He buries his face in his hands and takes a shuddering breath.

“Dammit,” he groans to himself, to her door, to the world falling to pieces around them.  “Fucking dammit.”  

No one has words of comfort for him or the girl sleeping restlessly in the room he sits across from.

No one knows how to talk to her stranger of a brother.

No one knows how to survive.

Not anymore.


	12. your voice in my ear

Chuck came for her.  

He came to her when Gipsy broke and Yancy died.

He...came.

But he isn’t the only one, it seems, who came to rescue her too late.  

What’s the point of rescue?  Yancy is _gone_ and Gipsy is...Gipsy is too?

“P-please,” she whispers to herself, begging her mind to clear and that empty space where Yancy used to stand to fill once more.  “Please help me.”  

Chuck stands over her, along with a bearded man with a tanned face and deep crow’s feet framing his eyes.  At first she thinks it’s Yancy, but Yancy is _gone._ Gone because she didn’t obey Pentecost’s orders and turned Gipsy on her own to save a ship tossing about in the Pacific.  Her brother is _gone_ and Chuck has come to save her.

_Too late._

The stranger, with his cold blue eyes and shadow of a golden beard on his jaw, turns to her and tightens his fist in Chuck’s jacket.  His eyes are...familiar.

She groans and tries to sit up.

But she cannot.

She is missing something more than Yancy, it seems.

She is missing quite a bit more than Yancy.

She remembers a flare of pain in her back, the sound of bone cracking, the feel of Gipsy’s harness tightening around her hips.  She remembers something moving her legs for her.  

Remembers…

Gipsy spoke to her, out there in the ocean after Knifehead broke them both and took Yancy from the Conn Pod.  Gipsy held her, cradled her, kept her safe while Jazmine moved the Jaeger’s massive body forward.

_Help-neural overload imminent-help Jazmine.  Help me-beacon non-functioning.  Coolant at negative levels-help me._

“Help me,” she whispers to the two men standing over her, to the man she loves and the man she thinks she should know.  “Help me find Yancy.”

Pain grips her, but only to a certain extent in her body and she knows-knows if she tried.

She wouldn’t be able to move to fix it.

 _Somehow I moved that Jaeger_ , she thinks as dark waves wash up her burned and broken body and  the ghost of Yancy echoes through her skull, insistent and terrifying.   _Somehow I got Gipsy to shore on my own._

Darkness tightens its hold on her and she thinks she hears Yancy say out loud, “I’m going to help you kid.”

But it’s not Yancy.

Yancy is _gone_ and Gipsy Danger is lost and…

She’s a broken relic from the Mark III Jaeger program.

 _They’re going to dump me in Oblivion Bay too,_ she thinks idly as she fades and someone holds her hands and Chuck growls incoherently in the background.   _I’m done.  I’m..._ broken.

“I’m going to fix you Jazza,” the thing that isn’t Yancy whispers at her ear and she tries to swim out of darkness, tries to find him.

Tries to move her feet, her toes, her legs.

Nothing.

“Raleigh,” she whispers to the darkness, to her older brother who promises to fix her, just like always.  “Raleigh, please.”  

 _I’m here,_ he whispers into the hole that used to hold Yancy.   _I’m here Jazza._

_Just hold on._

She drifts away with a ghost of one brother in her mind and another in her heart.  

She drifts away.

And dreams of Jaegers and a cold ocean and a tree with the perfect branches for climbing.  

Dreams.

Of promises made and broken.

She keeps breathing.

**

 _She’s reading a letter_ from Hansen on her tablet when the Kaiju alert begins to sound one night in February.  

She sits up so quickly she almost tumbles from her bunk and her eyes widen as she looks at the holo-screen glowing in the corner.  “Category three,” she breathes as the alert continues to sound and the Shatterdome wakens around them.  “Yancy!” she shouts as she slips free of her bed and straightens at her brother’s head.  “Yancy!  Come on!  Movement in the breach!”

Her brother, never much of a morning person to begin with, groans and smacks her on the head.  “G-way,” he mumbles into his pillow as that damn alert whines and Tendo begins sending them stats and data about their next kill.  

She simply snorts and shoves him roughly in the shoulder, forcing him dangerously close to the edge of the mattress; he groans and she ducks away from another slap, grabbing clothes as she goes.  “Punk,” he mumbles blearily, a faint grin tugging at his lips and she chuckles as he finally sits up from the bed and throws his blankets aside.

As he slides from the bed, still yawning and charmingly tousle-haired, she slips a thin golden band faced with a tiny pearl from her finger and slides it onto the chain beside her dog tags.  

It settles between her breasts, like it always does when they run a mission and she doesn’t think much of it as she bounces around their quarters, throwing clothes at her shambling brother and gushing about the Kaiju heading straight for them.

Tendo has given the bastard the codename “Knifehead” and it’s the biggest one they’ve faced yet.  

She knows Gipsy can handle it.

Her Jaeger has the best team of pilots in the entire PPDC.  They’ll bring it’s ugly scaly-skinned self down before Pentecost can even blink the sleep from his eyes.

She’s pulling on a sweater when Yancy stops just inside the washroom.  “Hey kid,” he barks, catching her attention and she turns to him in surprise; he’s grinning, his blue eyes sparkling and she knows that even though it’s only two in the morning, he’s excited. And why shouldn’t he be?!  In a few minutes they’re going to be in each other’s heads, driving a giant metal robot out into the Pacific.  

They’re going to be facing off with a monster from another planet and they’re going to _win._

She grins at her older brother, her blue eyes sparkling just like his and as their crew begins to pound on their door, summoning them to suit-up for the Drop, he levels a finger at her.

“Don’t get cocky,” he says as he slides the washroom door closed and the Kaiju alert continues to sound throughout the Anchorage Shatterdome.

She grins and shoves her feet in her boots.

The thought that they might not come back from this Drop doesn’t even cross her mind.  

It doesn’t.

But it should.

Rangers have a life expectancy of nilch and when you jockey a robot that’s twenty stories tall and several thousand tons of titanium…

 _Neural handshake invalid,_ Gipsy’s voice murmurs several hours later when it’s just Jazmine in the Conn Pod, just Jazmine facing off with a Category Three, codename Knifehead.  Just Jazmine…

And Gipsy Danger.

“Yancy,” she sobs as she switches the neural disc to her right hand and struggles to move her legs, to keep the Jaeger upright.  To keep it alive.  “Yancy, please.”

 _Jazmine, listen to me!_ he shouts over-and-over-and- _over_ in her skull.  “I’m listening,” she sobs as the plasma cannon sputters to life and Gipsy shudders into death all around her.  “I’m _listening_ Yancy!” she sobs as she unloads the clip into the bastard that’s destroyed her life.  There’s a blinding flash, a warning scream from Gipsy and the Kaiju crumbles and LOCCENT goes quiet.  Silence fills the Conn Pod and she sobs as she keeps moving forward, somehow despite the twisting pain in her spine and the numbness in her feet.  Somehow she takes on the neural load and...she moves her Jaeger forward.

“ _Yancy!_  Help me, please! _”_  she groans as she sags in her harness.

There’s no answer, just Gipsy’s voice ghosting along with Yancy’s through her skull and neither seem to know what she should do.

For once in her life…

No one has an answer for her.

 _Don’t get cocky,_ he says and all she can see is him grinning at her, all she can feel is _him,_ in her mind.  Tall and blonde and loving.

Her brother.  

And then he is gone, leaving an empty hole in her mind that was once filled with memories of a sunny house and cigarette smoke twining from an ashtray and baseball bats swinging towards snowballs thrown by older brothers.  

He’s gone.

Nothing.

Just a ghost of a voice swirling in her mind, a desperate plea for her to keep remembering, to keep him alive.

“Yancy, please _,”_ she sobsinto the dark silence that takes her, into the dark silence where she was once able to feel her brother at all times, pressing into her mind.  “Please...don’t leave me.”

 _Don’t get cocky,_ he says once more as sand and snow crunch beneath Gipsy’s feet and the robot’s limbs finally crumple.

_Don’t get cocky._

_Jazmine, listen to me!_

_Yancy._

_Please…_

_I’m sorry._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry guys!
> 
> I have been so busy the past few weeks-absolutely no time to update or tweak this story. 
> 
> I'm getting it together though. 
> 
> Don't worry!
> 
> -M


	13. this goes farther

Raleigh is sitting in the mostly empty mess hall when Tendo Choi finds him.  It’s quiet, sometime in the early hours of morning and neither man looks to have gotten much sleep recently.

“Hey Becket-boy,” the Anchorage LOCCENT Officer quips as he pulls up a chair and collapses bonelessly against the table; Raleigh glances at him with a frown, his bloodshot and shadowed eyes narrowing.  The man, dressed in a teal and grey pinstriped shirt, suspenders, a bowtie and maroon corduroys, flushes and clears his throat.  “Sorry,” he mutters into the steaming mug that smells like coffee but really isn’t coffee.  “Old habit.”  He holds out his hand and tries to smile.  “Tendo Choi.  It was a great honor to work with your brother and sister, you know, they were some of the best I’ve ever deployed.”  

Raleigh doesn’t respond to either the name or the mention of Yancy and Jazmine, simply fiddles with the soupy oatmeal he was given by a still yawning cook and a tense silence falls over the table.

He doesn’t cherish the intrusion of this part of his sibling’s lives-doesn’t like being reminded that there are other people here that knew Yancy and Jazmine, knew them well enough to give them nicknames and to cheer for them when they came up against the Kaiju.  He fiddles with his oatmeal and studies his unwelcome companion for a long moment.

He can see the hero-worship in his eyes, can see the wonder and respect most people bear for rangers and their counterparts.  Idly, he remembers seeing this same man in Los Angeles, during the early days of the war, when there were three Becket’s and not just a broken remnant.  He remembers seeing him shadowing Pentecost’s steps, holding a coffee mug in one hand and a tablet in another.  His hair has more oil in it than it did in the old days, has a bit more of a curl, but it’s the same man.  

His skin starts to crawl at the consideration he spots in his companion’s eyes.

Suddenly, he wonders if maybe this meeting isn’t so happenstance as it appears.  

His mind flashes to the unsaid request Pentecost made him, right before Raleigh’s fist struck his jaw, and he closes his eyes wearily.

Of course, he thinks to himself as the silence stretches on and the few people sitting in the mess hall around them begin to notice the table’s occupant’s tension.  Pentecost will never let go, will he?  He smiles bitterly into his porridge and grits his teeth against the curse he desperately wishes he could shout in the LOCCENT’s face.  Back-up rangers.  Figures.  They’re all thinking if one could pilot a Jaeger solo, the last one might be able to as well.    

“They’re saying she’ll never walk again,” he says suddenly, when the silence has gone on too long and Raleigh’s skin has begun to crawl; he bites out the words, each as cold as the next and Tendo Choi jumps, spilling coffee-substitute onto his maroon slacks. His mouth opens but really, there aren’t any words to possibly say in this situation and Raleigh’s lips twitch into a wry, crooked grin anyone who worked with the other two Becket’s would recognize.  

It’s the look of a man doggedly preparing for a fight, for a fight he knows he’s going to lose.  

Round-and-round his spoon goes and the oatmeal is finally gumming up a bit now.  Raleigh swallows and passes a hand over his eyes; he’s exhausted.  It’s been two days since he was summoned to Anchorage, to save his baby sister too late, and he’s starting to feel it.  Very little sleep, very little food and the constant stress borne from seeing her broken has worn him down to only a shadow.  He glances up from his cooling porridge and tries to summon some of his humanity, his old swagger.

But it’s gone.

“The doctors,” he mutters as Tendo stares at him with a mug at his lips and memories in his eyes.  “They said that the neural overload and the damage to the Jaeger-“

“Gipsy Danger,” the other man interrupts quietly.  He clears his throat as Raleigh’s jaw clenches and his fingers lock around the fragile bowl in front of him.  He continues doggedly though, his jaw lifting stubbornly and memories of facing off with two other Becket’s filling his mind.  This one is a healthy mix of the two Rangers he knew so well, at once stubborn and ridiculously brave.  “Her Jaeger’s name was Gipsy Danger.”

Raleigh’s teeth grind at the name but he nods begrudgingly.  “I know,” he mutters.  “I-I know.  We came up with the name, years ago, as kids.”

Tendo, entirely too aware of what Raleigh is thinking of, smiles slightly and leans back in his chair.  “She’s one of a kind, you know,” he says quietly as the steam from his mug washes over his face and Raleigh isn’t entirely sure if he’s talking about the robot or the girl who jockeyed her.  He finally pushes the oatmeal away and leans back in his chair as well, content for now to simply listen.

He’s too tired to fight anymore.  

Tendo Choi’s eyes close and he sighs.  “Solid iron hull,” he murmurs and Raleigh’s eyebrows rise in surprise.  “Absolutely no alloys.  Did you know that most of the early Jaegers, the Mark I’s and II’s were constructed out of pretty much any type of metal the engineers could get their hands on?” He shook his head and glanced at Raleigh, before taking a sip of his cof-sub and continuing.  “It’s a miracle the damn things could even move, let alone that they could take a hit from a cat-1 Kaiju.  But then the Mark III’s rolled out and our funding increased once the UN realized how good the Jaeger program was for humanity.”  His smile increased and Raleigh watched as he began to sketch a familiar Jaeger’s outline upon one of the mess hall’s thin napkins.  “They were gorgeous and fierce, brutal killing machines.  But our girl...She was the best.”  

Finally Tendo’s eyes rise to meet Raleigh’s and he leans in to murmur too soft for the other Anchorage crew members to hear.  “Your sister and that Jaeger were the best we’ve ever had.”  Raleigh’s eyes narrow at that and when Tendo whispers almost too fast for him to hear, Pentecost is going to dismiss Jaz, he stands, every muscle in his body trembling furiously.  

“What?!” he snarls, his words biting and harsh.  “What the fuck are you talking about?!”

Tendo shakes his head and pushes his chair free of the table.

“That’s all I know Becket-boy,” he murmurs as eyes turn in their direction and the mess hall falls silent.  “Fix it,” he finishes with a tap of his finger to the table and a last sip of his cof-sub before leaving the mess hall.  

Raleigh simply stares at him, his eyes wild and his hands fisted at his sides.  Tendo rushes away, Rosary at his wrist swinging and Raleigh doesn’t move to stop him.  

Doesn’t have the words to stop him.  

Pentecost is going to dismiss Jaz.

The words bounce along the edges of his mind as he prowls through the Shatterdome and his anger does not dwindle even as he rushes towards LOCCENT where he knows the Marshall spends most of his time.  

“You can’t do this to her,” he half-shouts, half-growls in Pentecost’s face and he almost doesn’t notice the faint dribble of blood dripping from the man’s nose as he turns towards him.  “You can’t take the Jaeger program from my sister!”

He notices the blood then but before he can even mention it, a handkerchief is at Pentecost’s nose and the man is shoving past him towards the Shatterdome.  

“I can and I will, Mr. Becket,” Pentecost snarls as he wipes the blood from his mustache and slips the cannister of tiny sour-tasting pills from his pocket.  “There’s nothing you can do about it.  She disobeyed direct orders and as such she is going to be disciplined.”  

Raleigh rushed after him, fury fueling him and he did not let the Marshall get any further before shouting, “She barely made it out of that goddamned robot alive and you’re disciplining her for doing her job?!”

Without thought he throws himself in front of Pentecost and slams his fist into the locking mechanism of the Shatterdome’s door.  “She was doing her job, sir,” he pants as the Marshall glares thunderously at him and folds his arms across his broad chest.  “You can’t punish her for something she thought was right.”

There is a moment of silence as the Marshall seems to ponder whether or not to kill him and then the man sighs.  “Your sister was a cocky pilot who didn’t know the first thing about following orders.” He hesitates for a moment and finally his eyes close.  “She didn’t know how to listen and because of her she got your brother killed.” Raleigh flinches at that, at the thought of Yancy and Jaz in the Conn-Pod fighting and dying together and he doesn’t miss the flash of understanding in the Marshall’s eyes.  “Your brother was a good man, Mr. Becket.  He was one of my best.  He knew that Jaeger better than most pilots I’ve trained.”

They are the wrong words to say, so soon after Yancy (he was one of my best) has died and Pentecost sighs once more as the last Becket son rushes away, back to his sister, back to the safety of her room.  

“I’m going to have to push him,” he murmurs to the person who slips out of the Shatterdome to stand at his side, her arms folded over the clipboard she holds tightly to her chest.  

“Of course, sir,” she says politely, her eyes locked on the Becket man’s back.  “Will he do it, do you think?”

Pentecost is quiet for a moment and then he smiles before pressing the tips of his fingers to his nose.  “Yes, Miss Mori,” he murmurs as they turn and head back into the Shatterdome.  “I think he will.  Eventually.”  

 


	14. promises and curses

When they were kids there were no Kaiju.  

When they were kids there were no Jaegers.

The world wasn’t ending, well, not as suddenly at least.

And they were a family.

“Raleigh!” the little girl shouts as she runs as fast as her short legs will allow her.  Her braids whip her back, stream behind her as her arms pump in time to her breaths.  In the distance she can see her brother’s playing under their favorite tree.  There are sticks flying in the air and even from this distance she can hear the sharp clack clack of them smacking together.  “Yancy!  Wait for me!”  

She’s six years old and wild with it.

Yancy is twelve-the oldest of their tiny circle and the quiet voice of reason.  He watches over his younger siblings but isn’t afraid to put them in their place.  

Raleigh is nine-the middle kid.  The one with the most to lose, their Dad says as he ruffles their hair and kisses their foreheads.

He has Yancy to look up to and Jaz to protect.

He’s the bravest of them all.  The one who isn’t afraid to climb trees, to punch Mike Kurst a little too hard in the face when he makes fun of her braids.  He’s the one who tells Dad he broke their Mom’s favorite lamp when it was her.  He’s the one who will back Yancy up at every fight and push Jaz out of the way.

He’s the one who eggs her on, pushes her harder, tells her to keep fighting.

Yancy looks up at her shout and smiles.  “Hey smalls,” he says as she runs up, breathless and flushed.  The air is chilly but not as cold as it could be and all three of them revel in it.  Soon the snows will start and they won’t be able to play outside in just a jacket and sneakers.  

Soon constant night will take them and it’ll be too cold to do anything but sit in front of the fireplace and watch their favorite movies over and over and over again.  

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps as she watches Raleigh drop his stick and stretch up for the lowest limb on their favorite tree.  “I’m nearly as tall as you both!”

They both laugh at that and Yancy pats her on the head.  “Sure you are, shortie,” he says as he jumps for the limb just a few inches higher than Raleigh’s and begins to climb, his movements easy and borne of long practice.  

She pouts.

She’s nowhere near tall enough to jump so high.

And she’s never climbed the tree before.

“Here.”

Raleigh leans off the limb, his long legs straddling it so he won’t slip and she blinks at his hand, for a moment uncomprehending.  He wiggles his fingers and grins, even as Yancy scrambles higher and faster than he’s ever climbed before and as she places her hand in her brother’s hand she can’t help being pleased that he’s not racing Yancy for once.  

He hauls her onto the tree limb beside him and for a moment she panics; she’s never liked heights.  Never liked looking down from any higher than two feet and she whimpers despite herself.

His arm wraps around her waist though, steadying her and as he scoots her closer to the trunk and the next limb, he whispers in her ear, “I got you Jazza.  I won’t let you fall.  I’ll always be here to keep you safe.”  

It’s the first time he calls her Jazza.

And it’s the first time he promises to keep her safe.

But it is most definitely not the last.

 

_I swore to her that I would keep her safe and I failed in that Pentecost._

Raleigh’s voice weaves through her skull and she sighs through the blue tinted Drift-like memories washing across her mind.  Her fingers twitch but she does not wake.

She focuses on nine year old Raleigh’s voice whispering in her ear as he encourages her to climb the tree, to trust him.  As he promises to keep her safe.  

_There is a way for you to make up for that Mr. Becket._

She frowns when Marshall Pentecost’s voice joins Raleigh’s but she does not let the memories-dreams-Drift-whatever fade.  She holds onto six year old Jazmine and nine year old Raleigh.  Holds onto the sight of twelve year old Yancy’s sneakers climbing miles above her.  

She holds on.

_I’m not piloting a Jaeger-there’s no one left to Drift with, Pentecost!  My brother is dead and Jazmine...Jazmine won’t even be able to walk after this.  So don’t ask me._

She focuses on the feel of rough bark under her palms, focuses on Raleigh’s thin arm around her waist, bony elbow digging into the tree as she draws them both too close to the trunk.

She focuses on her brother.  

_I’ll make sure she isn’t dismissed if you agree to help me Mr. Becket._

Her eyelids flutter and the blue memories begin to fade.  

She begins to lose the feel of Raleigh helping her up the tree, begins to lose the sound of Yancy teasing them from a few feet above their heads.

Begins to lose the feel of the tree limb under her toes.

_You’ll let Jazza stay a ranger if I agree to join the program?_

Her fingers twitch and soft linen instead of rough bark rustles under her touch.  She frowns.  Raleigh’s voice is rough.  Deeper than memory recalled.

And Pentecost.

Pentecost is in the Drift.

But he’s different now.

He sounds tired.  

_I’ll let Jazmine Becket continue as an instructor and adviser to the Jaeger program, to any new recruits we may gain.  But only if you agree to come to my aid should the need arise for another ranger with the inherent Becket skill all three of you seemed to have._

She stiffens, memories tasting of blood and neuron damage rushing to the forefront of her skull and she tries to stop hearing Yancy screaming in her skull. Tries to forget Gipsy moving impossibly under her.  Tries to…

Not hear what Raleigh says next.

_You want me to go?_

_Yes.  For now.  Go back to the life you constructed for yourself and leave your sister to me.  But when I call, I want you to come running Becket.  That’s the only way I’ll agree to her staying a ranger._

It makes sick sense she realizes as tears begin to prick the back of her eyelids and the familiar musky scent of her brother washes over her.

Raleigh always brought out the worst in her.

Always forced her to be brave.

If Pentecost is forcing him away, with a promise to come should the need for someone with Mark III piloting skills arises…

She can understand.

_I can do that sir.  For her._

She can understand why Raleigh agrees.

But she doesn’t like it.

“Raleigh!” she croaks, ghostly memories of braids flying in the wind and sneakers clinging to the rough bark of their favorite tree washing over her once more and for a moment she can’t tell if…

She’s dreaming or awake.

Her eyes fly open and she prepares to throw herself after her brother, to stop him, to force him to take his promise away, it’s fine, it’s fine.  She can leave the ranger program.  She can take a dismissal.  Just don’t leave-Raleigh.

The room is empty.

Sunlight warms the pulled curtains in the window and she cannot move her legs.  

It takes her a moment to realize there’s a piece of paper resting on her chest.

It’s a picture.

A picture of the three of them.

Of them before the world went to hell and her brother promised to keep her safe.

“Raleigh,” she whispers as the gaping hole in her heart widens further and blue memories leak along her consciousness.  “Raleigh.”

He doesn’t come.

Because he promised to do anything to keep her safe.

Including signing his life away for what can only be his death.

It’s the end of the world afterall.  

Death is the only thing waiting for any of them.

 _Raleigh_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm doing a two-fer guys. Mostly because I'm a horrible human being and I hoard chapters like a crazy cat lady hoards cats. 
> 
> So here's two chapters in one day.
> 
> Just for the hell of it. 
> 
> -M


	15. the end times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time guys. 
> 
> I'm sorry about that. 
> 
> I have no excuse. 
> 
> Love always.
> 
> -M

“You’re going to get Becket.”

Herc Hansen doesn’t phrase it as a question and Pentecost sighs as the door closes behind his old friend.  His quarters in the Anchorage Shatterdome are bare, packed away, much like the rest of his base and there is nothing left to show of the history that was made here.

Nothing but two old men

“Yes,” he says simply as he slips a pill between his lips and shrugs into his greatcoat.  “I need a Mark III ranger and he’s the only one left.”  

Hansen doesn’t protest.  He knows Pentecost-knows his plans, knows how this game is going to play out-so he shoves his hands in the pockets of his fancy blue dress uniform trousers and says quietly, “He’s one step above a rookie Stacker.  He’s never jockeyed in the field.”  

Pentecost glances at him in the mirror as he buttons the brass buttons on his coat and a ghost of a smile flits across his lips.  “Neither had we, when Coyote and Lucky came to us,” he says just as quietly and for a moment they’re silent, each lost in his own blue tinted memories.  

Finally the Marshall steps away from his washroom, the heavy blue coat flapping around his ankles as he moves towards his old friend and a true smile on his lips as he claps a hand to Hansen’s shoulder.  

“It’s going to be an interesting ride, Herc,” he says and the other man’s eyebrows rise at the excitement he hears in his voice, at the blatant rebellion he can see in his gaze.

“You’re going to have to find him a proper co-pilot,” Hansen says as they pace from Pentecost’s quarters to the rainwashed flight pad and the choppers waiting for each of them.  They both hunch their shoulders into the wind and his voice is almost lost to the elements as he bellows in his old friend’s ear, “Not even a Becket can jockey alone for long-despite what you think.”

Pentecost turns at that, his foot propped on the bottom step leading into the Sikorsky and he leans in to shout in Hansen’s ear, “Jazmine piloted Gipsy on her own for an hour before the Conn-Pod burned and Tendo thinks she could have done it for another two.”  He smiles and squeezes Hansen’s shoulder, saying as he slides into the chopper that’s set for Sitka and the Wall, “And Raleigh was the better ranger of the three.  So I’ll take my chances.”  

I’ll take him over your boy, he doesn’t say as the doors slide closed behind him and the rotors begin to rev overhead.  

He tries not to think of the young women waiting for him in Hong Kong, each as impatient as the other for the legend he is set to retrieve.  

He tries not to think of how truly desperate they’ve all become, now that they’re dredging up relics from the Bay and the Wall.  

He tries not to think.

The flight to Sitka is too short and his memories are too blue.

“Mr. Becket,” he calls as he steps from the Sikorsky onto the crumbling Sitka wharf.  The last Becket son stands before him, a bitter smile on his face and some things never change, even in four years.  

“Marshall,” the kid calls back as he shoves his gloved hand into his belt and the Sikorsky’s blades whip his hair into eyes.  “Lookin’ good.”  

Pentecost doesn’t comment, simply waves his escort back and studies the young man before him and the wall stretching above them.  

“Can I have a word?” he asks and Raleigh’s smile becomes even more bitter.

“Step into my office, Marshall,” he says as he turns into the bowels of the Wall and fades into the shadows.  

Pentecost follows after a moment, his coat flapping around him and as Raleigh sags onto the lower ridge of a massive sewer pipe tucked amongst some of the metal and tools needed for the Wall, he says, “You remember the promise you made me, Mr. Becket?”

Raleigh stares at him for a moment, his eyes narrowed in consideration and he sighs.  “Yeah, yeah I remember that promise, Pentecost.”

How could I forget it?

Pentecost smiles and shoves his hands in his coat pockets.  “We’ve got an old Jaeger ready for you.  And...well, you’ll see if you agree to come with me to Hong Kong.”  

Raleigh stands, slowly, and tries to gather his thoughts.

Tries.

Fails.

“What did you tell her?” he asks as he moves down the pipe and past the Marshall.  All around them the Wall workers bustle, none of them sparing even a cursory glance to the two men standing off in the shadows and Pentecost smiles grimly.

“The truth, Mr. Becket,” he says as sparks fall around them and metal corrodes.  “Only the truth.”  

Raleigh grits his teeth and tries to ignore the scripted quality this conversation has.  

Any protests he may have, he knows they don’t matter.

Because in the end…

There’s a Jaeger waiting for him in Hong Kong.

And he promised Jaz he’d keep her safe.

Just like he promised Pentecost that he’d come running when the man called.  

“I can’t have another person in my head again,” he says stiffly, the words falling from his lips before he can stop them.  “We were perfect together-How can I have another person echoing in my skull?  And Jaz-”

“Jazmine Becket is doing her part in this war, just like you are, Mr. Becket,” Pentecost, his voice edging dangerously into fury.  “So I have to ask you, where would you rather die?  Here?  Or in a Jaeger?”

The words are scripted, the pep talk of a commander used to bellowing at his men through a comm link.  The words are tired, worn thin.

Dying is dying.

It doesn’t matter if it’s on a Wall destined for failure or in a robot that may or may not save a few lives.  

He climbs into the Sikorsky behind Pentecost anyway.

Because in the end…

He promised Jaz he’d keep her safe.

And if fighting alongside this bastard of a man meant keeping her safe in the long run?  

Then he’d damn well do it.  

 

 


	16. the apocalypse creeps

In her dreams it’s not wheels that squeak along the battered floors of the Hong Kong Shatterdome but boots.

She can even hear the familiar clink of metal vibrating with each step she takes and it’s something that will always make her smile.  

Heavy boots, engraved metal, battered soles.

She misses walking.

“You don’t have to tie my shoes for me, daddy,” she mutters cheerfully to the blonde head bent before her.  She can almost feel him pulling the laces tight, can almost feel him tugging the heavy wool socks he forces her to wear, despite her toes not getting cold anymore, up her calves.  

She can almost feel him.

“Shut up Jazza,” he grumbles as he tugs the laces a bit and then tucks them under the leather tongue-he’s the only one who double knots her laces, the only one who knows just how she likes her boots tied and that, more than anything, is why she loves him.  She watches him fiddle with the shin-plates for a moment, trying to make sure he has them just right and then he’s buckling those across the fronts of her boots; they’re shiny, the engraved wings of the eagles glinting happily in the half-light of the bunk they share.  

He shined them for her, the moment he arrived from Sydney, with Striker and Herc, while she slept with Max in their bed.  

Shined her pair first and then his own.  

He only wears them for her, only wears them when they’re on base together and she smiles at the thought.  

“There, you’re all set,” he says as he settles back onto his heels and crosses his arms across his knees.  His dog, the Australian crews’ mascot, pants at his side, absolutely content, now that his owner has returned relatively whole from yet another successful kill.  He keeps his head bowed, his eyes locked on the steel toes of her boots and she sighs.  

“Hansen,” she says quietly, gently and then she is holding him, her hands rough in his hair as she pulls him up onto his knees and into her arms.  Her eyes close at the choked off sob he lets slip from his lips.  She hums softly before murmuring, “Hansen, you took the Kaiju out.  You and your dad saved Sydney-again.  You’re goddamned heroes and you know it.”

“What are we going to do Jazza?” he whispers and she knows he’s not asking about the last desperate mission Stacker Pentecost is prepping for.  

He’s asking about humanity.

Asking the one question every single one of them seems to ask these days.

What are we going to do?

She smiles and cups his chin, bringing his head up for a light kiss to his lips.  “What we always do, Chuckie boy,” she murmurs as she reaches down and unlocks her wheels.  “We’re going to save the goddamned day.”

She pats his cheek with a smile and reaches for her jacket.  

“Okay, mate, let’s get topside,” she barks as she shrugs into the battered leather jacket that still bears her old Jaeger’s name and emblem.  Max pants at her feet and Hansen smooths back his hair with a sigh before reaching for one of her badly knitted hats.  She continues as he tugs the hat down over her shortened hair, making sure to cover her ears as he does, “I’ve got my brother’s ass to kick and a young lady to introduce him to.”  

He shakes his head as she rushes from the room, wheels mostly silent on the cold cement and he mutters, “My money’s on you Becket.  My money’s on you.”

Her laughter echoes back towards him and he tries to keep from thinking of the Drift.

Tries to keep from thinking of her stretched beneath him in a pool of golden sunlight.  

“I always get my kill Hansen,” she calls as she makes her way towards the lift at the end of their quarter’s hallway. “I’m the best there is, after all.”

Her bright smile is the last thing he sees before she is being swept up towards the flight deck and the Sikorsky waiting for her and he grits his teeth.  

She may be excited to see her brother.

She may think him piloting the Jaeger she and Mako Mori have been restoring is the best thing for this mission.

But he still thinks the ass is a prick.

“We’ll see who’s best,” he mutters as he tugs Max from the bunk and makes his way to the Shatterdome’s storage bay.  “In the end, we’ll see who’s best.”  

 


	17. memories taste like tears

When Raleigh is twelve he runs away from home.  

He doesn’t get far in the end; Alaska is a hard place to live and a twelve year old can’t survive on comic books, stale Oreos and his favorite t-shirts for long.  

Night has fallen when his Dad’s rusted out pickup truck pulls up alongside him on the empty highway but Raleigh doesn’t notice or care.  He’s cold, shivering in his too-thin jacket and battered sneakers but he doesn’t whine or stop.

He keeps walking.

The truck rumbles and coughs beside him for what seems like an eternity and the only other sound is the soft sigh of the wind through the pine boughs overhead.  Raleigh keeps walking, despite the mud and ice soaking through his shoes and after a long moment he hears his father sigh.

“Raleigh, come home,” he says, his deep voice almost soothing in the terrifying stillness surrounding this abandoned stretch of Alaskan roadway.  “She didn’t mean it.”

“Yes she did,” Raleigh says through gritted teeth and he tries to ignore the tears pricking his eyes.  “She always means it Pop.”  

He doesn’t realize he’s stopped in the middle of the road until his father is holding him, safe and warm in the circle of his arms and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until his tears are getting stroked away by callused thumbs.  

“Shh,” his father sighs as he holds his middle son and tries to soothe his pain away.  “Shh, don’t let Jazmine get you down, boy-o.  She’s just a girl, just a baby.”

“She said I’m worthless Pop!” Raleigh half-shouts, half sobs.  “She said I won’t be able to do anything until-until I learn how to read.”

It’s a bitter point of contention with the Becket kids.  Dyslexia, his teachers say almost every single day, is just a minor obstacle.  Just another thing to adjust to, adapt to.  It’s far more common than most people think.  Far from unbeatable.

He tries to think of what his teachers say at night while Jaz teases him and thrusts books without pictures under his nose, demanding Read this Rals!  Read this paragraph right here!

He’s spent most of his childhood trying to explain to his youngest sibling that it’s not as easy as all that.  

“You’re not worthless Raleigh,” his father murmurs in his ear that night Raleigh runs away and suddenly he’s not the only one holding him.

“You’re not Raleigh,” Jaz sobs as she squeezes between them and wraps her scrawny arms around Raleigh’s waist.  Her tears and snot soak his jacket, and her hair is tangled, falling out of it’s braids but she’s here.

Holding him.

Crying over him.

“I’m sorry Raleigh, I’m sorry!  I love you!  You’re not worthless,” she wails as he stands stiffly within the circle of her arms and their father shakes a musty smelling blanket out, preparing to wrap around them the moment they’re safe in the cab of his truck.  

Jazmine smells like woodsmoke and sugary cereal, a comforting smell he’ll remember in blue tinted dreams and her arms are tight around his waist.

“I don’t want to lose you Raleigh,” she whispers desperately.  “I don’t-don’t want to lose you again.”

His arms shake a bit when they finally rise to wrap around her narrow shoulders and he sighs before pressing his cheek to her tangled blonde hair.

“You won’t Jazza,” he whispers as the wind sighs around them and their father’s truck purrs behind them.  “I promise you won’t ever lose me Jazza.”  

 

 


	18. the apocalypse screams

The world is ending and Pentecost seems to have a plan to stop it-not that he’s told Raleigh anything about said plan.  The flight from Sitka has been tense and mostly silent, lost to the beat of chopper blades and blue tinted memories.  

It suits Raleigh Becket just fine.

There’s nothing to talk about anyway.

They’re all going to die at some point, one way or another.  

That’s not even in question at this point.

So he kicks back and tries to keep from thinking about who’s waiting for him in Hong Kong.  

Tries.

Fails.

They finally approach Hong Kong Bay fourteen hours after Pentecost’s triumphant return to Alaska and Raleigh shifts in his chair and yawns.  He’s dreamt in the last few hours of their flight, blue tinted nightmares that smell like rusted metal, iced-over mud and sugary cereal.  

Tears.  

Stale Oreos.

He’s going to see Jaz in a matter of moments.  

Pentecost’s gaze is far too knowing as Raleigh shifts in the chair across from him and his teeth flash in a feral grin as he half-murmurs, half-shouts over the thunder of the Sikorsky, “She’s waiting for you Mr. Becket.”

They are not the most reassuring of words.

He has a lot to explain.  

Has a lot to ask forgiveness for.  

He just has a lot of shit to claim.  

And he hasn’t really spoken to Jaz since she was eighteen.  

The chopper lurches as it touches down on the Shatterdome’s helipad and as the door slides open and aides rush forward to assist the Marshall and his crew, Raleigh grits his teeth.

The sudden realization that he’s about to see his baby sister strikes him and he lurches in the process of stepping from the passenger bay to the pad.  

A soft laugh greets his unsteady appearance and a familiar voice quips, “Just as graceful as ever, huh Rals?”

“More graceful than you ever were, baby,” he shoots back before he can stop himself and he straightens to see wheels resting on the tarmac, instead of boots.  He stills, cold dread washing over him as memories of the last time he saw her crash down around him and he curses himself for his stupid comment.

His mouth pops open as he tries to find the right words to say but before he can stop himself she’s laughing.

Her umbrella tilts back, rain spilling from the black canvas and her blue eyes sparkle mischievously back at him; he realizes in that moment that she meant to upset him, meant to throw him for a loop and he barks out a short laugh.  

“You’re such a baby,” they both say at the same time, their voices overlapping perfectly and they miss the sharp glance Pentecost shoots them through the rain beating down around the helipad.  

“Beckets,” he barks, “shall we go inside and introduce him to the rest of the team?”

Jaz laughs, her eyes sparkling through the rain falling all around them and twirls her umbrella lightly.  “All of the team, Pentecost,” she says fiercely and Raleigh’s eyebrow cocks as she winks slowly in his direction before spinning her chair expertly and racing away.

She moves fast, just like she always did when they were kids and as he follows her from the helipad, Pentecost at his side, he finds himself remembering her when they were young-young hot-shot rookies in the still new Jaeger program.  

She was the one who named the Mark II.  

The one who stitched it’s name on their jackets.  

The one who fought tooth-and-nail for the right to paint the logo on the Jaeger’s left breast.  

She was the one who deserved to Drift.  

She was Gipsy Danger’s pilot.

Not him.  

Not Yancy.

Her.

She was Gipsy Danger and Gipsy Danger was Jazmine Becket.  

He almost stops in place with that thought, just before entering the Hong Kong Shatterdome and his hands fist as he fights to keep control.  To keep from running away.  To keep from cursing Pentecost out right there in the rain beating down around their heads.  

To keep from falling at his knees in front of her and beg for her forgiveness.  

“Jaz,” he chokes, just as the massive dome doors sweep open and another person, bearing a black-as-sin umbrella, appears.  

Her steps are controlled-dainty almost-and the only thing he sees of her are the military issue black combat boots everyone besides him is wearing on this rock.  But he knows…

He knows in that moment, that she’s special.  

He barely registers his baby sister’s smug grin before the newest black umbrella is tipping back and an angel’s face is lifted in his direction.  

Pentecost towers over her-protectively, almost, which is absurd because this is the PPDC’s greatest (last) Marshall-but Raleigh doesn’t pay any attention as the man introduces her.

“This is Mako Mori-one of our brightest.  She and your sister are in charge of the Mark III Restoration program.  She personally handpicked any possible Drift candidates who may jockey with you.”  

Jaz grinned as Mako stared, eyes wide, and muttered as she elbowed him in the hip, “I wasn’t allowed to help.  Too picky apparently.”  

He elbows her back, absently, his elbow only head-height and bows slightly in Miss Mori’s direction.  He doesn’t get a chance to introduce himself, to say hello-to ask her to Drift with him-before she is leaning in Pentecost’s direction and saying in Japanese, _I imagined him differently._

Raleigh grits his teeth for a moment but then he catches Jazmine’s eye and seeing her knowing smirk, he tilts his chin in Mako’s direction and asks in the same tongue, _Hey, better or worse?_

Her stunned surprise is worth every moment of this rainy meeting in Hong Kong.

Every moment.

And as she bows ever deeper in his direction, Pentecost and Jazmine looking on, he wonders.

Wonders what it’ll be like to Drift with someone who has never been in his head before.  

 


	19. the end of our lives

_You don’t have to be a hero Raleigh._

He falls into the Anteverse.  

Gipsy carries him away from Mako.

Away from Jaz.

Away from the corpses of the men he learned to love.  

Away from the world he died to save.

Gipsy cradles him and he hears Jaz in his head.  

_You don’t have to be a hero Raleigh._

_You don’t have to be brave._

But he’s the only one left.

Her screaming Hansen’s name will haunt him for the rest of his life.  

He prays the pod bearing Mako’s unconscious body made it to the surface before the Kaiju fell.  

He prays…

Prays two other pods made it to the surface as well.

But the Mark V-first and last-is dead and the Mark III is dying.

Gipsy’s voice is garbled-garbled but he knows she still lives all around him.

Her voice joins Jaz’s and Mako’s in his skull.

_Turbine melt-down in ten-nine-eight…_

He never thought he’d find that chillingly dispassionate voice reassuring.  Never thought Gipsy would keep him safe.  

_I’m glad it’s me and not Jaz,_ he thinks idly as the radiation finally reaches him through the layers of the fight suit and his eyes begin to feel like they’re cooking.   _I can still keep my promise to Mom._

_“Raleigh_?”

Jaz’s voice, quiet-too quiet in his ear- comes to him as he drifts in the too-thick layers of the Anteverse, Gipsy broken and still breathing all around him.  

“Yeah kid?” he chokes out as his mind begins to shatter and a strange blue light starts to fight with the nuclear red of Gipsy’s conn-pod.  

_“I love you.”_

He smiles as Gipsy’s heart surges into death and his feet are detached from the conn-pod’s Drift harness.  

_E-vac pod deployed._

“Me too, Jazza,” he whispers as the Breach collapses and Gipsy gives one last breath-one last breath to save him.  

Darkness takes him.

Radiation burns him.

Jaz and Mako rattle around his skull.  

_Can a person ghost if they’re dead?_

 

 


	20. oblivion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We end this like we begin it. 
> 
> In darkness and blood. 
> 
> Oblivion writes our names in pain. 
> 
> -Anonymous

Epilogue

There’s a picture of the Resistance taped to the mirror in his room.  

Twelve grimly smiling people group together-the last hope of mankind in a broken world-and to any casual viewer it would almost seem as if they are nothing but a group of mutual friends.

It’s 2026. The picture is frayed and yellowed with age and sunlight.

People don’t even remember the names of the pilots smirking in that picture.

Kaiju are nothing but scary stories to tell your children when they’re naughty.  

Jaegers are nothing but shattered action figures at the bottom of toychests in attics.  

The PPDC is a footnote in the history of humanity.

Most of the people in the photo are dead.  

Her wheels squeak on the linoleum of his room, the only sound she makes as she enters it’s stark interior, and as the door closes behind her the other woman in the room glances up.  

“Hello Jazmine,” Mako Mori says with a small smile; she tucks her hair behind her ear-the red a brilliant splash of color in the otherwise gray light spilling down around her.  

Jaz Becket smiles back and glances at the only person she’s come to see.  

“How is he?” she asks as Mako moves from the window back to the hospital bed Raleigh Becket has occupied for two years since the Breach Collapse.  His hair is more grey than blonde these days, his body more bone than muscle and his scars more physical than emotional.

He doesn’t open his eyes at the sound of their voices.

He never opens his eyes anymore.

The neurologists say the Breach Collapse paired with the radiation poisoning from Gipsy’s collapsing turbine caused a stroke.  They say it was a miracle he was able to activate the e-vac pod.  They say it was a miracle he was able to force Gipsy Danger into a melt-down.

They say a lot of things.

But the two women who sit at his bedside every day know it wasn’t a miracle.

It was that one quirk every Jaeger has with her rangers.

That one mechanical miracle most scientists assume is nothing but an urban legend but any ranger knows to be true.  

Gipsy walked on her own after all-when Jazmine’s legs failed her and Yancy died in Knifehead’s jaws.  Gipsy walked.

And Gipsy died for her last ranger.

Mako sighs and strokes the hair back from his still face before glancing once more in Jaz’s direction.

“He’s Drifting,” she says quietly, her dark eyes as shadowed as ever.

Neither woman mentions how those words are starting to feel like an epitaph.  

**

You have to go back to her, Rals.

Yancy is in the Drift.

Blue shadows line his face.  Blue blood leaks from the hole in his shoulder.  Blue tears drift from his eyes to mingle with blood and shadows both.   

Raleigh leans into his body-lets his older brother hug him and comfort him like he never did when they were training to be rangers.  He wonders how long they’ve been standing like this, arms wrapped around each other and blue shadows washing over their bodies.  

He doesn’t ask who his brother is talking about.

They’re in the Drift.

All four of them.

You have to go back to her, Rals.  

He steps away from Yancy and wipes blue blood and blue tears from his burning skin.

“Okay.”

**

Her wheels squeak on the linoleum floor as she executes a perfect sitting wheelie.  Her shortish blond hair tumbles into her eyes as she grins absently to herself and she tries to not listen to what the doctors have to say to Mako.  

She tries not to listen despite the pointed glare the other woman shoots her and she leans into the railings on Raleigh’s bed and whispers, “If you could just open your eyes, Rals, and prove these bastards wrong that’d be great.”  

Her wheels squeak as she rocks back in her chair and Mako paces and the doctors keep talking.

She almost doesn’t hear him.

Almost doesn’t hear the echo of a Drift in his voice.

She almost…

Misses him.

“Okay.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So finally got to the end. 
> 
> I hope this doesn't feel like a cop-out. It kind of feels like a cop-out to me. But then again, I'm horrible at endings. Like REALLY horrible. I never have one ending for a story. There's always like 3. My betas always hate me when I get to the last chapter on a fic.
> 
> It's mostly because I panic about how to go about things. 
> 
> This story has been interesting to say the least. I really enjoyed it, really enjoyed thinking about Jaz and Raleigh and while I didn't focus much on Mako or the Resistance, I did like writing this other Becket no one ever thinks about. 
> 
> Thanks for keeping up with me-sorry for that slump, I really have no excuse other than wicked writer's block in which nothing could be done-and thanks for your comments. They meant a lot and really got me going. 
> 
> So as always, love to all.
> 
> -M


End file.
